And so may we expect that conservative Christian colleges (e.g., Hillsdale, Liberty) be required to tolerate pro-choice advocates, atheists, defenders of marriage equality, and critics of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights? (Or don't their faculties get any federal research funds?)
12
Administrators have shown themselves to be cowards when it comes to defending free speech and inclusion on campus.
This attitude is a rampant disease among liberals and so called progressives and falls right in line with their socialistic believes and attitudes. Donald Trump rightfully speaks up for those who value and relish free speech in the US.....finally.
3
Not a bad piece and real candor.
He admits that virtually all presidents hate Trump and hate all conservative speakers.
2
I attended Amherst, a college which has had its own problem with a "Common Language Document" issued by its diversity office, subsequently disavowed by its president, and removed from the college website. See "Amherst College Releases Insane 'Common Language Document'" at https://www.dailywire.com/news/44910/amherst-college-releases-insane-common-language-kassy-dillon
1
The conservatives who complain about lack of free speech on campus are the same ones who want to silence critics of the Israeli government and invent religious justifications for excluding LGBT voices.
7
How rich is this, a brutus ignoramus trying to interfere with College's freedom in education? This is, olain and simple, governmental abuse of power; this, by a despicably vulgar bully in the Oval Office. What's next, replace the first amendment with the second, Mr. Trump?
1
This contention has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with the first step in purging the universities of liberal thought. Why else do the "free speech" comments also, so often, complain about the number of "liberal" professors and what is being taught? And why are the details straight out of the mouths of the right-wing grift machine?
This is a psyop, and has always been, to undermine the university -- a place where misogyny, belief in the supernatural, racism, race science, biological determinism, raw bigotry, cultural supremacy/hierarchy and worship of the rich is unwelcome. This is why they can't stand it.
The attack is from all sides -- the "free speech" lie, the "colleges are failing" lie, the "liberal professors" lie. This is an attack, without any center but to win and purge. The entire right-wing hate and propaganda machine has its hooks in deep.
The speakers that were invited -- that garnered such response -- were trolls and performers specifically picked to be intimidating, threaten, harass, ridicule and even dox students on campus. A nasty troll. A disgraced race scientist. A shill grifter from hate You-Tube. Spewing the worst, anti-intellectual claptrap. Does there not need to be a discussion about what constitutes a good-faith guest that adds to the dialogue?
The author wants students to be seated and remain silent while this nastiness fills space where real inquiry should be. This is all a hall of mirrors. There is no crisis. It's all fake.
3
Isn't this the same Trump guy whose Trump University scammed thousands of students? The same Trump guy who paid 25 million dollars to settle a massive lawsuit for cheating those students? why are we listening to that Trump clown?
3
How is "quieting" a protester promoting free speech?
1
The Republican/Conservative/Evangelical Axis with their Saint Donald as their head is only interested in opening every venue and avenue to THEIR speech and presentations, no matter how academically questionable. Their thinking and argument has ALWAYS been that OF COURSE liberals have to allow them into their halls since that is by definition being liberal. THEY, on the other hand, are a monolithic theism that does not allow for any dissenting voices in their presence, like the Taliban. Now, try to imagine what the reaction would be if Black Lives Matter set up a table at Christian Universities. Under this new law, they would have to allow it, wouldn't they? Do you think they will? The R/C/E Axis has NEVER been able to win their arguments or souls on the merits. They only know how to lie and steal their way there and then whine and dissemble (sounds like someone we know in high office, right?) when they are called out on it. This is more of the same. The Liberal/Progressive/Democrats should be diligently planning all their presentations and speeches for Conservative and Evangelical colleges and institutions throughout the land and when they are pushed back, invoke the Free Speech Law.
1
How can Trump be the right messenger for free speech on campus when his rallies are hotbeds of hatred for anyone not white and not willing to bow to his dictatorial instincts? The issue is complex, Trump is not. He is a sack of white privilege spewing venomous language wherever he can find an audience. Trump suggesting solutions for free speech on campus (made possible by his idiotic threat to cut research funding) is like asking Dr. Frankenstein to do a little cosmetic surgery with his hacksaw and Thanksgiving carving knife.
2
So now college professors must endure drivel from students who disagree with science and facts? A biology professor must sit by and force herself and other students to listen to an anti-evolution screed in class discussion? Or is this more like the recent presence of the faculty and staff anti-LGBTQ Campus Crusade for Christ group that popped up on my campus to promote their hate? Perhaps my college must now approve a local Nazi group's request to use campus facilities? And the threat of disobedience is the withdrawal of federal funding for scientific research. Hmm. I see a pattern.
There are three topics students may not address in discussion or writing assignments in any of my courses: Personal politics, abortion, and personal religion. None of these topics are appropriate for college-level discourse because they are too personal, too deeply attached to moral values for proper objectivity and argumentation verifiable by facts. Even in liberal arts, hard evidence, not belief, is the standard.
I don't care what the dumpster fire says, my students will abide by my rules in my classroom. I don't trade in moralistic pap.
Cheers,
Beanie
4
Tell you what, when conservative religious institutions start inviting Marxists, anarchists, atheists, abortionists and gay rights activists to speak at their schools I'll take your claims here seriously.
4
The NYT is always very terse about the resume of its Op Ed guest columnists, so the author's squib did not describe First Things.
According to Wikipedia, First Things is an ecumenical, conservative and, in some views, neoconservative religious journal aimed at "advanc[ing] a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society".
In other words, it's a right-wing publication dedicated to a creating a theocratic social & political structure. Some of its better-known writers have included such Islamophobic propagandists as Gary Bauer and David Horowitz; a zealous champion of white colonialism, Midge Decter; and Gertrude Himmelfarb, a historian who admires the Victorian age as the apex of civilization.
So, it's hardly a surprise that Mark Bauerlein would endorse an effort by a thuggish right-wing president to threaten to withdraw federal research funding from colleges that allow students to shout down thuggish right-wing speakers.
The First Amendment protects speakers--and their hecklers. If an institution wants to punish rowdy spectators, it's free to do so--and it's also free not to do so, without being threatened by a tinpot autocrat who believes only he and his sycophants are entitled to free speech.
3
The best way to deal with people like Ben Shapiro, is to not waste your energy on them.
When someone’s raison d’etre is to be a hateful agitator, giving them the attention that they’re seeking is tantamount to handing over a victory.
1
While shout-down culture has its faults, there seems to be a white victimization complex that exists among many who interpret any opposition to their opinions as attacks on free speech.
2
I'm not a fan of Trump but this executive order is overdue. These mobs on our college campuses are a small minority. But the spineless appeasement of University officials only encourages them; their intellectual abdication invites them to take over & cause havoc. They don't respect our most cherished rights: freedom of speech and assembly. Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by student protesters. Students can't use physical force or coercion; they can't censor or suppress anyone’s views or publications. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one’s own antagonists. It doesn't give these irrational SJW the right to threaten a professor, occupy the college President's office or shut down an entire school. There should be zero tolerance for these actions & there needs to be consequences for those that break the law. Permanent expulsion would be a good start. Criminal & civil prosecution if they violate laws. It's outrageous that we've allowed a minority of progressive fanatics to bring us to this point. It's time to push back. This entire movement will collapse overnight if someone would simply enforce the rules. There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues, on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. These entitled wanna be fascists are out of control. It's the adults job to set boundaries. It's a shame it has taken this long.
32
This piece offers no evidence for the view advanced in the headline, unless you consider the phrase "most likely" as evidence for an argument. It's hard for me to see that as ok, even in a piece written by an English professor. (I am one.)
I don't know what Deans want. They are in a tough spot, that's for sure. But if the views advanced here are the writer's own, he should say so.
2
I'm not sure. Colleges are inherently liberal. It's self-interest, yes, but also ideology. We'll see.
1
It's hard for me to reconcile the emphasis on "diversity" with an absence of diversity in thought, opinion and political belief.
Interestingly, it was at very liberal Wesleyan University in CT where the president repeatedly stood up for the rights of more conservative students to be heard. Former military members were welcomed and encouraged to join the debate. True liberalism isn't completely dead.
What Wesleyan's president, Roth, demonstrated was that the way to promote tolerance and inclusion was to ensure one felt that one's own views were tolerated and included.
6
"Selective schools are in a fierce competition to attract applicants and build a properly diverse and elite freshman class."
This sentence alone reveals so much of the problem. What constitutes a "properly diverse" student? Perhaps we should ask the Asian applicants who have discriminatory racial quotas implemented against them by selective schools because there are "too many" of them. I cannot take seriously either the university or the students who talk about racial equality while ignoring the racial inequality that Asian applicants must suffer through.
14
Students will simply demand that universities reject the federal dollars. Why would they suddenly start acting reasonably?
7
"But that’s not enough for some students, who object to the very presence of an outspoken conservative on campus. "
Who's in charge on these campuses? The loudest-mouthed kids? Disrupters should not be allowed to disrupt. It's that simple.
"Selective schools are in a fierce competition to attract applicants and build a properly diverse and elite freshman class."
"Properly diverse?" Why is "diverse" even a criterion or an objective? The purpose of a school is to teach, not to act as act as some sort of social-engineering mechanism. Why wasn't that sentence just "Selective schools are in a fierce competition to attract applicants and build a elite freshman class." (BTW, my high school valedictorian daughter refused to apply to several "selective"--like Duke-- schools because of their far-Leftist reputations. Pandering to the loud-mouths cost those schools an "elite" freshperson.)
"A student at Yale yelling at the professor who tried to reason with her did tremendous damage to Yale’s brand, but the administration couldn’t come down on her without compromising its pledges of inclusivity and anti-discrimination and sensitivity."
No, what's wrecking Yale's "brand" is being seen as a place where loud-mouthed disrupters are allowed to disrupt. There's nothing even remotely wrong about "discriminating" against uncouth barbarians.
15
@Henry Miller, Libertarian
Agreed. Yale's administrators have been incapable of governing and have been ruining the brand as well driving down alumni contributions. It's not the bratty students who simply learned what they could get away with. Instead of disciplining the brats, the school coddled them.
Other examples, Yale, despite protests, decided to retain the name of one of its undergraduate colleges, John Calhoun, but then REVERSED its decision after the hate brats once again had a tantrum.
In the WaPo about 15 months ago, Yale's English Department chair provided one of the lamest defenses for eliminating Shakespeare from the required ENGLISH department curriculum for ENGLISH majors. He should just have been honest: "Equity & inclusion" harassment won, learning lost.
As an alumnus, I'm sad that these examples are the norm and not the exception. Scholarship & a strong education have taken second place in favor of satisfying the diversity mob (the academic euphemism for both mediocrity & intolerance). So if administrators and department heads abdicate their duties & continue their spineless ways, they have given up governance.
So, I'm afraid the Speech Order should only be the 1st order of many such orders necessary to return scholarship, freedom, fairness and learning to campuses. Especially those like Yale.
8
First, before trying to solve a problem, determine whether a problem exists. There are 4500 institutions of higher learning in the US. That is four thousand and five hundred. These extremely few incidents occur at extremely few elite or prominent institutions. They are news because they are exotic.
And lest you want to counter that we don’t hear about incidents on other campuses, the burden of proof is on you. Good luck. There is no prevalent oppression of speech. Even organizations like FIRE have to hype the few and far between.
Second, of those 4500 schools, there are zero, exactly zero, that enforce liberal speech in any way let alone the way that Liberty University and its ilk enforce conservative speech and thought. The enemy of free speech in higher ed are avowedly right-wing institutions.
Third, the incidents Bauerlein cherrypicked from Trump’s already cherrypicked list generally resulted in action by the school and discipline of the students where possible. Trump’s demagogic order would not prevent these incidents any more than it would change the outcome. All it does is put more pressure on administrators, not less. Bauerlein knows this, or at least should. But admitting so would leave him with nothing to bloviate about.
The NY Times, both its reporting and pontificating, is consistently and persistently wrong on higher ed and should go back to school before publishing anything else on the subject.
13
@JimS Have you seen the studies on the political beliefs of Professors in our community of Universities and Colleges? That alone should raise a loud alarm. Left leaning, and that is a weak term for the actuality, is institutionalized by the process of tenure. Faculty promote those who think like themselves. And since the large majority of Professors, often into the 80 to 90 percentiles, vote and think as Liberals, those who are moved into the tenure tracks are those who think like the Professors who promote them. I have two Masters degrees obtained in 80's and then year 2000.
The bias is real. Period. The facts are that the majority of the Administrators have very little interest in "making a safe space" for Conservative views of life.
The University is a wonderful place, but only if true debate is accepted. What has taken place on our Campuses is the antithesis of the idea of the University.
9
@JimS. My daughter is high functioning autistic. She went to a non-elite community college. I helped her by reading all the material from several of her classes to help her understand the content.
First, the content of her classes was consistently extremely liberal. In most of her classes, a conservative point of view wasn’t even presented. She wanted to major in English but the class work was so skewed to social justice that she couldn’t take it.
Second, although she often struggles to pick up subtlety in human interaction, she figured out quickly to just regurgitate the liberal line to get decent grades. Presenting a conservative point of view would cost her a grade or two.
This taught me first hand that the problem is far beyond what most people disconnected from universities could even imagine.
You focus on the few incidents involving high profile speakers but that is nothing compared to the jack boot suppression that occurs daily in thousands of schools.
11
@Rob I suspect that you see a liberal agenda in pretty much everything that isn't expressly right-wing.
1
It's a shame this order had to be issued. It's been truly upsetting to watch the slow death of free speech, something unthinkable just a few generations ago.
I hope some of those large college diversity budgets will be redirected toward the education and promotion of free speech. A freshmen seminar should be required.
11
The illiberalism is actually on the parts of the students and those administrators who acquiesce to these whims. For many of these students (virtually all of whom are progressives), they are hearing a contrary (read conservative) voice for the first time in their (short) lives.
Since this contrary viewpoint is (to many of these students) an anathema, they may retreat to safe spaces and other locations on campus where friendlier faces and voices are present. In this scenario, the university takes on a paradoxical role; the protection of virgin ears from contrary thought, rather than the laboratory where the Five Freedoms enunciated in the First Amendment can be heard (and experienced) in all of their full throated majesty.
Until we restore the First Amendment to its rightful place on many of our college campuses, the suppression (by the mob) of contrary (read conservative) viewpoints will continue unabated. We all lose when these voices are silenced.
13
I hope everyone read this argument carefully. “Quiet or be disciplined…it’s the law.” is the message of dictatorships.
10
@RM
It didn't get by me. "You sit still now and listen to the trolls and propagandists and discredited academics your nasty little classmates brought here to intimidate and harass you." Conservatives are disingenuous about everything. They don't believe in free speech -- they just believe in muscling their way into a space they want to dominate without care to the method. The supernatural, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, race science and biological determinism have no place in an institution of liberal learning and intellectual inquiry.
1
Or maybe the University presidents are being silent because the bully in the White House can jeopardize research funding they depend on in so many ways.
6
I am a progressive who believes that college campuses SHOULD allow for free speech. One of the things that students are there for is to learn how to deal with uncomfortable points of view. In this sense, I disagree with campus safe spaces.
I don't like hearing racist, sexist, etc. speech, but unless it's incoherent tripe being shouted out by some inarticulate doof menacing people on the subway, I can appreciate their right to express their POV.
I remember talking to someone who was of the same ethnic origin as I am and this person had a limited viewpoint of Muslims, their history in India, etc. Their POV was tinged with bigotry and general prejudice and made me rather uncomfortable. Still, I continued the conversation because it gave me some data of why they thought like that, but it also helped me to understand what I research I might need to do before having to defend my stance.
Prior to this episode, I felt that everyone who was at least prejudiced (if not bigoted) against Muslims/Islam were that way for the same reasons. Combating this kind of ignorance required the realization that I was ignorant about others' POV(s) and also about the group I was defending. These are complicated issues and there are more grey areas than not.
Listening to what the other person has to say & trying to understand their POV, etc. equips you on how to confront those issues; quite a few times it bursts the bubble that you're living in & broadens your own perspective.
15
@Mithu Actually colleges have a duty to bring in the white supremacists, anti-Semites, hatred-inspired religionists and every other misfit to give speeches to students so the students can watch and see these people often spouting their nuttiness in quiet voices with the illusion of reason, and so that they are exposed to the existence of these ideas and learn how to counter them. That is a key aspect of becoming educated.
Sorry but the spineless response by University administrators has created a vacuum that was bound to be filled by the Trump government. This order will not change anything. The sad thing is that the impotence displayed by the administration at these universities comes at the expense of the welfare of the very students they claim to want to help. It has damaged the one thing these students seek to get ahead — a decent education. And if the administrators were really interested in diversity they would focus on more scholarships for minorities to get in and stay. Feeding these students diversity ideology is just a fig leaf cover for their ineptitude. Ask just one question— was it income constraints and cost inflation that kept minorities from getting to and completing college or was it the lack of “belonging”?
5
That's the logical consequence of the French poststructuralism of Foucault & co: if discourses shape reality, if words have exactly the same weight than actions, then you have to shut up some opinions, because these opinions make people suffer and can even kill them. On the other side, if you are are classical liberal and don't believe in poststructuralism, then all that is preposterous and free speech becomes paramount.
8
@Joseph
Thoughts shape words, and words and thoughts shape actions, and people can suffer and die from that chain of events. I find nothing preposterous about that notion.
While I do not want the government involved in the speech portion of that chain of events, I do recognize civil society’s role in “normalizing” what is acceptable to say. Civil society has been in that role since, well...well, since societies began.
As categories, conservatives and liberals, do not either one seem more open to people completely speaking their minds, they just each have different ideas about what they find acceptable, and what they do not.
1
Fifty-two years ago, George Lincoln Rockwell, came to Columbia University under the auspices of a Columbia Univ. student group. The FBI followed him and questioned everyone in sight. At the last moment before Rockwell was to speak and as protesting students (meaning, those who DID NOT espouse Rockwell's neo-Nazi position) jammed the auditorium where the speech was to be held, authorities at Columbia cancelled the speech. Rockwell never did speak at Columbia.
2
At my alma mater, the university of washington, they allowed an alt right speaker to speak on campus... and one of his supporters brought a gun onto campus, pulled it out, and shot a protester in the stomach.
Actually, most "liberal" universities have very permissive policies about who can speak. The reality is that events that have been banned on campuses are largely due to the fact that many of these alt-right/white supremacist groups have a history of violence.
Conservatives have been very good at spinning this as a "free speech" issue. It rings a bit hallow though, since there are numerous conservative and religious universities with restrictions of free speech and behavior which are far more onerous. Somehow, I don't see Trump defending the right of students to hold a pro choice rally at Brigham Young university...
13
@Brendan Many of these alt-right speakers bring their own agent provocateurs posing as protestors to make sure things go downhill fast.
1
I work on a college campus. I certainly hear a wide range of views expressed. But yes, not every view is welcomed warmly in every context.
When I think back to a course I once took many years ago, I’m sympathetic to those who probably shut out some students. The course was about the portrayal of women in medical literature. The class started out with a number of men, but they soon dropped out. Why? I don’t know. I can tell you why I didn’t miss them, however: they wanted to discuss matters most of the rest of us considered “settled”. I didn’t want to rehash old stereotypes of women in order to establish that they were in fact just stereotypes. Instead, I wanted to discuss the implications of those stereotypes for the practice of medicine. I didn’t begrudge the men their questions or their perspectives. I just didn’t think they belonged in that course.
5
@JP
What sorts of things were settled yet difficult to explain or defend? Sounds like a good opportunity to practice marshaling facts and explaining or defending a position in a college environment.
7
Thanks for demonstrating the that anyone who disagrees with liberals is not welcome - exactly why President Trump’s directive is so badly needed.
6
Yes, controversial speech should be allowed on campuses but what needs to be acknowledged is that in many of these instances, the entities that invite "conservative speakers" on to campus are not interested in diversifying the intellectual perspectives but are hoping to provoke over-reaction from young liberal firebrands. Much to the shame of these young liberals, they are only too easy to provoke--try not showing up at all I would suggest.
Nonetheless there is a question to be asked: is Milo Yiannapoulos and his ilk really adding to the intellectual discourse of the academy or is he there to be an agent provocateur so that conservatives can continue their effort to undermine the very idea of a liberal education? There are a great many conservative minds who have much to add to the experience of college students; Ann Coulter isn't one of them! Object to the quality of the conservative speaking cadre and to the cynical motivation of campus conservatives but not to the idea that opinions contrary to your own need not be aired.
8
Anyone with an intellect worth the name fully understands that this has nothing to do with free speech.
In any case, speech is understood to be somewhat connected to thought.
Freedom of speech means you are allowed to speak, but not that anyone is obliged to listen. Picketing speaker,s walking out in protest, packing the venue and calling out questions and comments to disrupt a speaker are all, themselves, free speech.
So administrators can throw up their hands and say, we have to let this speaker come or we could lost federal funding, but students are under no obligation to listen.
7
Also, there's no law saying that fund-raising demagogues need to be invited in the first place and given a platform to speak. People like Ann Coulter and Milo and their anti-intellectual ilk have no reason to be speaking to college students. Just don't invite them. If right-wing want to hear them let them organize their own private events. The problem with that approach is that public outrage is the only reason these types of speakers are there.
3
So disrupting events to prevent others from exercising their free speech rights is OK with you - got it. Gotta be a liberal.
This entire piece is disingenuous! The conservatives want to bring their neo-nazi speakers on campus to preach thinly veiled white supremacist nonsense (yeah I'm looking at you Milo and Culter). The exact same message as the Concerned Citizens Councils, the KKK, and neo-nazi organizations only dressed up in shiny new packaging. They aren't looking to exchange ideas, they are only looking for more weak minded followers for their death cult. Then they act all shocked when one of their cult followers drive into a crowd of protestors, or shoots up a church, synagogue, or masque.
11
The entire matter began bc 2 NON-Berkeley Students had a fight on Berkeley's campus. The person who got hurt went to campus to antagonize and was hoping to get hurt and draw attention to the Trump idiots of which he is one. Fox news purposely did not mention that either fighter was NOT a UCB students!!!
What most people don't realize, like those who work for Fox, is that the largest club on the UCB campus is the Republican Club. The UCB of today is not the UCB of the 60's. Fox News = Fake News.
6
A stopped clock is right twice a day. This is Trump's moment to do something that is right. Let's all be grateful.
8
Institutions, especially private ones, should be free to announce what they believe in and enforce it. These universities need to reaffirm their commitment to the free exchange of ideas, even stupid ones.
I am a pro-choice atheist who attended a highly-regarded Catholic university. Many students decried that the university would not provide birth control to its students. I am all for easy access to birth control, but this is a Catholic institution. They don't believe in contraception. Students know that when they choose to enroll. That's the deal. You cannot enroll in a Catholic school and demand that they bend to your un-Catholic whims. Students would say "But this is a great school, and I want to be part of it. Why should I have to let them deny me contraception?" Because it's a Catholic school. It is central to the school's identity, and everyone who goes there knows it. You cannot expect them to deny their identity just to accommodate yours.
The same is true with the anti-speech mob. Yale, etc. need to make it know they stand for robust debate and discussion. Students who cannot tolerate it are not worthy of those schools. They should enroll in lesser schools, where they will go unchallenged, and leave the spots at elite institutions to students who can handle discussion and debate. Those students are the elite ones, no matter what the SAT scores say.
28
@Kevin Honest question. Why would an atheist go to a Catholic school?
Every institution should be a "free-speech zone," including churches. Today's churches spew more hate than just about any other institution especially the evangelical and fundamentalists ones. They're not private; they get public aid in the form of police and fire protection, public utilities, enormous and unjustified tax breaks. When churches become "free-speech zones," colleges should follow suit.
3
So the lunatics are in charge of the asylum? Deans intimidated by students translates into universities being in the tuition business rather than the education biz...what happened to Franklin Murphy's characterization of the campus as "a market place of ideas."?
9
No, university presidents do not “favour free speech”. They just don’t want controversy of the kind that might upset donors. That’s why they will try to keep criticism of Israel away from campus (speech suppression), and its also why they want Ben Shapiro to speak in peace (looks like defending speech, but is really about avoiding notoriety).
5
Free speech does not necessarily require a binary choice. A reasonable case can be made for excluding explicit threats, but that's not the issue in most recent cases. People are being prevented, for example, from making anti-abortion speeches or arguing that blacks are genetically inferior. While I find these opinions abhorrent, it's dangerous to disallow them. Just think back 65 years when left-wing argument was proscribed. The political winds can blow both ways.
7
@Darth Vader "People are being prevented, for example, from making anti-abortion speeches or arguing that blacks are genetically inferior." Abortion is something that can be intelligently discussed. Racial inferiority, not so much. There are legitimate reasons for discussing abortion. I am pro choice but I'm not "Yay! ABORTION!" I want to live in a world where there is no need for abortions - and that is through eliminating unwanted pregnancy. Two sides can come together to work toward that. There is no legitimate reason for discussing racial inferiority. NONE.
1
Why give a platform to people who preach outdated ideas about racial inferiority? Not all ideas are equal and some of them certainly have no place in higher education. Don't invite them!
2
The general complaint is that "conservative" ideas are not allowed to be discussed. This is a multi level lie.
There is no real dichotomy of liberal/conservative. The folks complaining are trying to pretend their bad ideas are principles.
The positions staked out by those who call themselves conservative are bad ideas they are trying to get past proper scrutiny by calling them "principles". By that seeking to elevate them to a place where scrutiny can be portrayed as prejudice rather than honest intellectual evaluation. They have got religion tucked in there pretty tightly as well to make sure any attempts to parse this out are confused and confusing.
So "conservatives" are not being silenced. Bad ideas are being confronted as bad ideas. Most of these bad ideas are fraudulent social engineering and economic balderdash meant to confuse manipulate and minimize the people. Republicans are involved in this because they are the progenitors of this false ideology.
4
@magicisnotreal
So free speech applies to principles but not bad ideas.
Who in this Orwellian setting is set to discriminate between the two?
5
So having to punish or forcibly shut down protesting students is somehow making things easier for administrators because now they can say, "hey we're just following Trump's executive order"? Should work like a charm.
5
It's the old Popperian argument about tolerance of intolerance. With his usual forceful logic, (The Open Society and its Enemies 1945 - that date might explain something) he said: "We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. " He wasn't wrong then, and he's not wrong now.
5
@Andrew He was wrong then.
@Andrew
It’s not offen one comes across a mention of Carl in these comments.
My impression, based on talking to a Sophomore at one of those Eastern elite colleges, is that the leftists bad mouth anybody who isn't equally as far to the left.
This student who previously thought of himself as progressive, got turned off to the leftists on campus. In reaction, he started listening to more right wing views.
I keep asking myself, who were these kids in High School a year or two before? Could they have been that rabid? Why does this emerge in Freshman year?
I doubt that the Administration actually did much to foster it. Rather, I think it's a fad among people who felt voiceless and suddenly found a way to have a voice, or a roar.
None of this is grossly outside of normal limits, but Trump is using it as an excuse to squelch the left. Classic backlash situation, exacerbated by the worst President I hope we'll ever see.
12
I respect Professor Bauerlein immensely, having read both his literary criticism and his commentaries in First Things. As a person on the left, I read Mark Bauerlein because he is sharp, perceptive, and he forces me to re-think my own orthodoxies. were there a crisis I would not disagree with the positions that he proposes here. However, I do question whether such left-wing "silencing" is in fact taking place in higher education across the United States. There are over 3,000 institutions of post-secondary education in the United States. Admittedly some of them have made the news as a result of students on the left acting in rather public ways to stifle free expression and administrations tepidly responding. The number, though - in terms of the universities involved and students agitating - is remarkably small. More to the point, I would say it is probably comparable to the number of institutions where there is a similar "silencing" of the left, implicitly or explicitly. We often hear of the left leanings of faculty ( at least faculty in Liberal Arts - Business and other professional fields tend to be a rather issue). There is far less - actually no - discussion of the right leanings of Boards of Trustees.
Like Professor Bauerlein my positions are based on anecdotal evidence. Administrations can be cowardly and faculty can fail to stand up for free speech. Where I disagree is that it is a left-wing phenomena. I also disagree that it is, a crisis.
2
The issue is not free speech. College administrators could care less. It’s like Rep. Ocasio says, “It’s all about the Benjamins!”
It’s all about the money. “How can we present ourselves to optimize our prestige and promote our brand to optimize our finances (endowments).”
Instead of the present “arms race” for the most socially desirable students, how about exiting the admission arms race, saving billions of dollars, and spending it on educating our young people? College administrators should focus more on outcomes than input. Any college can graduate a National Merit scholar. But how many colleges care about stimulating all their students and turning all of them into scholars?
1
How can students develop critical thinking skills if they are allowed to muzzle those whose ideas they don't agree with? College is supposed to provide education - not indoctrination. What purports to be the former is a travesty.
12
It’s simple, speakers from conservative or liberal groups can appear at events at colleges, but no law can force people from voicing opposition. If the audience doesn’t like the message then they can make that known.
6
@JER. yes a law can say you can't menace a speaker from campus or disrupt their right to speak, that is not free speech. We are not talking about peaceful protests we are talking about use of force to silence others.
9
@JER.
So no group should be able to speak without being shouted down by dissenters? There's this thing called the internet. There are things called signs.
Things can be discussed and disagreed with, without the use of force by the local majority.
Since when should things be run by "the group that screeches the loudest wins"?
9
@JER. If don't like a speaker don't attend the event or protest outside. BUT never prevent someone from speaking or physically attacking them (Middlebury)!
10
Bauerlein is spot on. University administrators want no part in regulating speech, but that role has been foisted upon them for two reasons. One, as Bauerlein writes, is the need to attract a diverse student body, which has made them hypersensitive to grievances voiced by historically underrepresented groups. The other, not mentioned in the article, is the “helicopter parent” mentality that demands students be shielded from experiences that are upsetting or uncomfortable.
Administrators aren’t pleased about any of this. They don’t want to have to provide triggers warnings for classes and they don’t want to have to fund full-time, on-site psychological counselors for students who arrive unequipped to deal with a flunked test, a romantic disappointment, or any of the other stressors that used to be thought of as a normal part of life on campus. But there’s not much choice. Parents are demanding more and more resources be spent on “student wellness,” and students quite naturally come to feel like if someone says something upsetting, they have a right to complain to university administrators, and a right to expect action.
So I’m sure we can expect a good deal of compliance with this order, even though the order itself merely restates existing regulations. The only problem with that is that our college campuses, one of the last places where facts are thought to matter, will become increasingly like the internet, where everyone is entitled to her own reality.
9
The author believes university administrators are afraid of their black and female students. I do not believe that is true. But to those administrators who are afraid, I say: Fear not! We will replace you with stronger men and women!
8
@Anna
I would say they should be replaced with more people of color and females.
Paul's biggest fan but I think he is misplacing blame here, it is faculty that cultivates the culture not the students. Some believe that the liberal arts have effectively been taken hostage by political Left, granting tenure to their own, which is why 'teaching social justice' has become an academic discipline for some reason, wearing the robes of objectivity. There has been a relentless chorus that conservatives are not part of the 'educated', the Elect? Does that or is there any distinction between 'educated' and 'indoctrinated'?
Could it be? The STEM disciplines are difficult to poach, they are subject to empirical evidence, an objective touchstone, things are fact or not whether anyone likes it or not. Not so the liberal arts, not at all, and questioning them can cause a protest rally demanding termination.
Google 'grievance studies' for a (possible) taste of how disconnected from reality even psychotic things may have gotten in academia. Not unlike an American version of the cultural revolution.
13
Does this English professor at Emory think those in departments on his campus that require federal funding to support research in, say, molecular biology or synthetic organic chemistry, should have their grants disturbed because some political whacko, right or left wing, was asked not to speak on the campus? This is an idea coming from institutions with no research presence like Liberty. The academic community should fight it.
7
@mocha Do you think that departments that require federal funding to support research in, say, molecular biology or synthetic organic chemistry, should have their grants disturbed because some student thinks her complaints about sexual harassment were not handled properly? What's the difference?
7
"Administrators want open inquiry and lively debate"
"Open minded" does not mean pure tolerance for any thesis/claim/proposition--regardless of how lunatic.
It's limited to logic and evidence based claims--faith and prejudice based are not in the academic ballpark.
The problem is popularity gets mistaken as credibility. But no thesis is "in the academic ballpark" due to popular opinion. Gallop polls may be evidence for popularity but not credibility.
5
The shout down culture is part of the open discrimination against white men on college campuses. Men are a minority on college campuses. Yet, it’s the women and ethnic minority groups who seem to have all the protections. We have “women’s studies” in college. We have Affirmative Action. We have scholarships specifically for women and ethnic minorities. What about white men? If they’re a minority, shouldn’t they have protections too?
20
@Mark White men are over-represented as CEOs, governors, Senators, House of representatives, mayors, school superintendents, school administrators, doctors, lawyers, police officers, firemen, judges, union workers, small business owners, college presidents, college administrators, sports team owners, and all STEM professions. I could go on, but I hope you get the point. We do not need to be worried about "white" males. They have too much protection. We need to protect the voices of other members of our society.
5
I have to disagree with you. There are many white males (women too) who by being poor, without connections or mentors are really underrepresented minorities, and would need all the protections that other minorities have. How many of the white males who now have powerful positions came from dire poverty? The distance in opportunities between a rich white student from the elite ( a child of the powerful) and the white child of a welfare recipient or a minimum wage earner is huge, many times much bigger than between whites and other colors. I think a solution would be to select underrepresented students by class and not by race.
8
@Robert What woman are you speaking to with that comment?
If it saves us from a collective retreat to our respective safe zones of strenuous agreement with the like-minded, great.
5
@mp Unlikely. That retreat you hypothesize is there and will be a "go-to" place despite what the college or the Federal/state government may do. College students are an imaginative bunch will find a way to get there no matter what.
I suggest one solution is to reinstate some kind of all-university curriculum so every student, no matter what the are studying be it STEM, liberal arts or other, must take the same courses-and pass-before being allowed to graduate. This uniformity will help prevent the retreat to safe zones because it will force all to confront what they find alien, unknown, hostile. My nomination for that course: Das Kapital, The Wealth of Nations and JS Mill's On Liberty as starters. Perhaps add in The Bible (even the Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books), the Koran, the Torah, Immanuel Kant and David Hume (for an atheistic outlook).
2
I hope that some day a college will tell prospective students that they will be challenged in college by ideas that they don't agree with, that they will be offended by some of the things that they hear, and that they will be in a space where opposing ideas can be heard respectfully. I have heard from several students who were afraid of expressing their views and who eventually stopped trying. No one learns from this. As a professor, I would welcome a class of students who want to hear other opinions and want to be challenged. After all, that is what the students are going to encounter in life after college. Isn't it our job to prepare them?
25
@chip
That's the joke. Usually, it's the liberal ideas on the college campus that challenge the common-knowledge, worship of the supernatural, rigid sex roles and playing good dog for the oligarchy that's obliterated at college. This is what the right seeks to stop. More people being, as they say "indoctrinated" with fresh ideas that weren't shoved down their throats from birth until young adulthood out in their backward burghs and boros.
1
On the other hand, students could be more motivated than ever if it’s on Trump.
Google (YouTube), Facebook, and Amazon are already censoring for the Cultural Marxists in command of the public square.
What's the big deal with gov'ment getting involved--all three match anything both Stalin and Mao ever attempted and have far more power than the deep swamp in controlling what Americans see and read?
3
"You must be quiet or you will be disciplined. I have no choice - it's the law." That is chilling. It sounds like a line out of a bad movie about Nazi Germany.
I wonder where the line is? Could a student group invite onto campus a Stalinist who proposes liquidating the kulaks? Would the university have to ensure an interruption-free forum (and bear all attendant costs) for that speaker in the name of "free inquiry"? If so, then by all means proceed with this policy with my blessing.
3
@Max Farthington
What you describe sounds exactly like what most of the leftist speakers, welcomed on most campuses, are.
2
@Max Farthington- What is chilling is your apparent advocacy of disrupting and preventing speech you disagree with!
1
@Max Farthington "You must be quiet (you cannot disrupt other's speeches or threaten or use violence) or you will be disciplined." Works for me.
1
Ok. Goes both ways.
4
Bauerlein here is a senior editor at First Things, a very conservative religious org dedicated “to opposing secular culture on college campuses,” or some such thing.
Seems we all hate Gawd, or some such thing.
5
In the end, the United States will richly, and tragically, deserve a Trump second term, the most likely outcome of the 2020 presidential election. To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr, it's not so much what we do, but what we fail to do, that defines us.
So what does this have to do with inviting nazi/racist/nationalist speech into US college campuses ? Oh, I dunno... thinking back to Europe in 1932.
5
Liberal students, or liberals in general, should plan marches right through the campuses of conservative leaning colleges, at night with torches, just like conservatives have been doing. Then I want to see how much so call free speech they tolerate. Until now we what we see is hateful people with hateful speech wanting to go to liberal campuses not to freely exchange ideas, but instead to purposely disrupt and intimidate liberal campuses and their liberal students. So go ahead liberal students---march through conservative campuses with torches, just like they did in NC. No doubt will be on Fox media complaining about the invasion. These conservative cry babies simply are doing what the nazis did when they marched through a jewish neighborhood, or when KKK burn crosses to intimidate African-Americans. They may think this is free speech discussion, but there is a difference between sitting across the aisle with a moderator, and literally staring into a hateful face spewing hateful garbage. This type of action is pure and simple harassment.
9
@Maria Rodriguez
Best idea yet. Liberal students should march through conservative campuses with banners supporting gay rights, abortion, the green deal etc. Would love to see how many of the conservative and religious students would stand by mute. And, if they heckled and yelled they should be reminded of Trump's law that forbids them from doing that.
8
@Maria Rodriguez Heavily armed, because, you know, freedom.
So your idea of free speech is that liberals should be required to shut up and conservatives should be allowed to speak.
Allow me to exercise my right to say that you are a hypocrite
10
No, his idea is that all should be allowed to speak. It is only liberals who can freely speak on campus now. @MAmom2
2
@MAmom2- Can you read? Liberals can speak and conservatives can speak. Colleges should support the expression of ideas! However, you may not infringe on someone else's right to speak either. The better idea will win!
1
Takes me back to the day of Vietnam War protests, which usually ended with Sheriff Harvey bringing on his snarling dogs and tear gas.
So tell me again, were we not supposed to do that? I do recall the elder generation telling us so... We were just supposed to go die for nothing.
I admit I didn't care for the extremism of some of the protest organizers. But their basic cause was just.
Same as today with the SJWs.
But it's all been blown out of proportion, because the protestors are just a minute percentage of the campus populations, which in large schools is around 40,000. Fast forward 10 or 12 years from the Vietnam protests: Reagan is elected and the US has thirty years of conservative economic policies. Marijuana is still not broadly legal. So, all those protests in the 60s, what difference did they make? We're still bogged down in foreign wars we shouldn't be involved in. By ending the draft, protest actually paved the way for more foreign adventures.
This is just Trump and the conservatives seizing an issue to rile up their base. They want you to think it matters. It probably doesn't.
5
Forty years ago, when I was working at Illinois State University, Frank Collin of the American Nazis came to the university to speak.
He came with his brown shirts. More than a 1000 students and faculty crowded in a small auditorium to hear him wander around numerous topics. He made little sense, and basically was laughed at. His grammar was atrocious, his arguments inane and he revealed himself to be an ignoramus.
In the free form of ideas, daylight usually exposes the bad ideas and the ones that are repugnant.
He never came back, and no one was converted.
It should be a lesson.
105
@Art Seaman
Of course this is all based on the assumption that the objectors have never heard these ideas before.
Why do they have to listen to them again? I think if there were a willing audience whom have not already heard them that would be obvious. I have seen no signs of this.
1
@magicisnotreal
Well, they don't *have* to listen to them as the speakers are in an auditorium and those that *want* to listen to them can. Protest outside the auditorium if you hate what the speaker stands for.
13
This is the same drivel as we constantly get about the MSM; waaah, we’re being picked on, waaah secular commies have done poisoned our children, waaah, they won’t listen to our Righteous Lectures, waaah, we’re just defending freedom. Or Fredonia, or something.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, we get to have Carlson whomp up a mob to go after English teachers. We get to send Judy Blume death threats. We get to have Texas schoolbooks censored because they mentioned that gay people were often murdered during the Holocaust, or somebody told the truth about the Pilgrims. We get to warp biology texts into taking Intelligent Design as science. We get to stick crosses on the tax-paid lawn. We get to demand that Moozlims get fired.
Personally, I think everybody gets the right to speak and be heard out, until they start directly inciting violence, and this darn skippy includes Nazis. If no like, no go to lecture, or show up with a picket sign...don’t stand there and spit, or charge up into somebody’s face belligerently, or any of the nonsense that has, ON OCCASION, happened recently.
But stop blathering at me about how picked on white guys are. On how picked on Christianity is. On how I have to take seriously Charles Murray’s bizarre distortions of behavioral genetics. On how I have to passively accept every right-wing twit whose book got pumped up on Rush.
15
@Robert
Of course leftists are kind and thoughtful and never threaten or dox conservatives (how many leftists wished death on Covington kids - teen agers of all people). in the meantime, we are to believe that doctors randomly "assign" gender to newborns, women' s brains are no different from men's brains unless you are a transwoman who knows she has a woman's brain? I can't help wondering which side will win this one - feminists or trans activists? Since we live in a patriarchal society, I put my bet on the transwomen.
2
It's pathetic that it took Trump to end the terrible behavior of students not allowing invited guests to speak on campus.
It's equally pathetic that it is taking Trump, Pence and Cruz to denounce anti-semitism. While the Democratic Party and the progressive Left embrace anti-semitism.
Come on Democrats! Stop acting like fools.
14
Let’s be clear about something, okay? Trump, and the people cheering him in, couldn’t care less about actual camous free speech.
Trump’s cincerned about his base, period. This is just stuff you tell the suckers.
And the gaggle of Christian fanatics and others cheering him on don’t want free speech for anybody BUT them. Remember, these are the people who’ve been using FOX and assorted far-right media to mob professors and occasional students for decades.
And is there academic freedom at, say, Liberty University? In a pig’s ear there is.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/liberty-university-when-it-comes-to-free-speech-its-anything-but
Oh, they’ll invite Bernie Sanders or Jimmy Carter in for a day, after ballyhooing themselves until everybody’s deaf. But show up on campus to speak for gay rights or legalizing pot, and they’ll arrest you. Order a textbook that says stuff fhey don’t like, and they’ll censor it. Go kiss somebody who’s the “wrong,” sex, and they’ll boot you out.
But that couple hundred mil in Federal aid? Oh, they’re keeping that.
Make no mistake: their idea of freedom is THEY are free (or will be, once they get the pesky atheists, commies and lesbeens cleared up), and you need to shaddap.
19
@Robert
First, how much federal research dollars is this school getting - those are the only funds threatened - and my guess is little or none. Second, schools like Liberty define themselves as fundamentally Christian with specific codes of conduct. As much as they say (per the article) that they value academic freedom, they won't tolerate those who defy their values. So, yes, a Sanders will be invited, despite differences of opinion, but someone who spits on their values won't. I wouldn't go there but I can tolerate their stance. Just as I would tolerate an otherwise very open to ideas gay organization refusing to host a speaker whose belives that everyone in that organization is a sinner and doomed to hell.
The problem is with secular institutions that claim to promote free inquiry that shut down ANY speech that questions left orthodoxy. On these "liberal" campuses, speakers who argue that maybe sending students to colleges for which they are under-prepared is not in the students best interest or that giving powerful hormones to 12 year olds to block puberty may be unwise, are blocked for being "hateful".
2
My emotions are with Trump's order: pound on the jerks. But my political sense knows that at all costs, government intrusion on campus must be avoided.
What to do?
Well, Number 1 is to recognize that the problem, what passes itself off as the left on campus, is exactly opposite to what we, the left of the glory days (1960s and earlier) were. And by way of shaming these bigots, who claim to descend from us, it is worthwhile recalling what our left did more than fifty years ago.
Our first big fight was for free speech. We had been a scorned minority: standing on a chair at the entrance to Berkeley, I should be lucky to get 15 people to listen.
At the height of the Free Speech Movement, a month or two later, we attracted ten or fifteen thousand people. By the end, we had the vast majority of students on our side.
Our free speech was for everybody, not just the left. Not only did we fight for the right to speak of the Campus Conservatives (ie, the 1964 Goldwater Campaign) and the Campus Crusade for Christ, they became organizations formally part of the Free Speech Movement.
So, Number 2 in dealing with the current campus impasse is the rebirth of such a real left. It, not outsiders, should deal with the thugs who think they are pinkos. Or with the anti-fascists, actually fascists dressed up for Hallowe'en.
If there is no interest in such authentic political action, then the student movement is finally dead, and who gives a poo about what happens on campus.
5
Strongman Trump has threatened to take away Federal Funding once again unless A, B, or C cow tows to his tune. One more layer of dirt on the roadway to Hell.
End of story.
4
This is one thing that the Trump Administration got right, though it would have been far preferable for the defense of First Amendment rights to come from the respective schools. The Halloween video of the Yale student outburst, along with many stories of "incorrect speaker" harassment episodes (including some with violence), dramatize how pathetic the climate for speech and inquiry has become in higher education.
The "Gold Standard" for speech rights on campus was set years ago by the University of Chicago, and many schools have adopted it. Quoting former president Hannah Holborn Gray, "...education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom."
Let it be so for all campuses, whether public or private. As I wrote to one college recently, "Fearful, crying students who cannot abide ideological challenges at the college level will not be equipped to become leaders in business, law, medicine, government, or any other field."
8
I've taught at both elite universities and in poor, marginalized ones, both in New York City as well as the rural outlands. Much of my curriculum focuses on simply getting students to talk about political issues without insulting each other, and it's very difficult. Many of us, who are liberal or leftist, trace this to many problems. But one problem in particular is the misappropriation of identity-based issues by elite institutions, such as universities, the DNC, and even this periodical.
What does misappropriation of an identity-based issue look like? It systematically removes a broader, holistic class analysis from an examination of oppression. It disregards historical specificity, and dismisses the intersectional roots of movements such as MLK's or Malcolm X's intent to make racial politics a part of a broader critique on capitalism.
The result has been a politics of resentment emanating from the left, one that is powerless to combat the collusion between politics and big money, to reduce militarism, and to address structural inequities through policy. What we have left is a system of in-group/out-group nomenclature, and if this nomenclature isn't obeyed, people are pilloried.
As important and vital as identity politics are, they have been twisted into a delusion that hinges on narcissism and defeatism, pitting class against race, men against women, and blues against reds. We don't know how to speak to each other with dignity. Thus, little is ever accomplished.
21
@Regulator really... I am from Europe and I am trying hard to understand what you are writing here. " misappropriation of identity based issues. There is a - between identity and based ...Identity is the base. So what is "identity-based " ?
But what sort of identity are you talking about, In European conceptualisation "identity " is part of the historical identification process. ( when I write historical it is not "history " ,it is the historicity of the subject itself. Just to precise to avoid confusion ). Then what do you mean by " misappropriation " ? By the subject itself ? "By whom ? It systematically removes " . This is incomprehensible. These false theories of the Self in anglo psychology are a catastrophy . Again..."identity politics " . What is that ?
1
@JPH
By identity-based I mean a politics that only considers issues of identity as it is popularly instituted by English departments who focus on multiculturalism as a means to combat marginality. It's also disseminated by left-of-center news outlets, and of course the DNC.
Popularly conceived as emancipatory, identity politics is taken to emphasize "recognition" of a marginalized identity—basically anyone who is not identified as straight, white, and male. Whereas minorities, and in particular black Americans, should have a popular politics that confronts systemic inequities, identity politics becomes misappropriated by becoming slogans deployed by left-of-center institutions, conveniently leaving out a holistic class analysis.
Part of the reason this happens is because there are many conservatives who don't acknowledge the structural inequities underlying a lot of policies, say in systematically excluding black Americans from receiving the same kinds of loans whites did from the GI bill, or disproportionate policing of black neighborhoods. Liberals are understandably upset by this erasure of history, but most of these liberals are upper-to upper middle class, and don't realize that supporting a "brand" of identity politics that actually resorts to the same essentialist logic white supremacists use—anyone of X identity (skin, gender) must understand their place as Y problem, and if they don't understand that, I'm free to attack their character, sans explanation.
4
@Regulator of course I understand totally what you are talking about and the adverse "historical " positions that express themselves in those games of identity jousts . I was trying to attract your attention on the fixated points of views that are kept inherent by the language formulation that you use and these formulation are , even further then, representing the origin of the unbudgeable definitions that create identity processes that are actually not elaboration of identities but creations of images, or signs. Like signalisation panels.
I think about the way cases are labeled in the British and American law. Like the famous Gibbons vs Ogden case that established the superiority of Federal law above State law ( and Ferry businesses...) What is remembered in the anglo Self kind of psychology or law is where the antagonists were sitting and then eventually what happened as a result. But the reason for the change of action is secondary a. Intentionnality is not recognized as primary motivation for evolution for stays is the configuration of the positions of interests and how those interests had to move and cope. It is an interesting philosophical problem at the intersection of the European and Anglo-American questions of identity. (Brexit, etc...)
Intentionality ( Montesquieu ) is labeled by the contenders of " Identity " as globalist (sometimes fascist ) as well as concepts are declared communist forms of thinking.
2
I'm a Bill Maher fan. I agree with some things he says and disagree with others. On his own show, he mostly has the left, but has also invited many Republicans, including some from the far right and the religious right. He believes strongly in free speech, having actually been cancelled from network TV.
He speaks often about how much of the Moslem culture is antithetical to American values. In the middle east, no free speech, no religious freedom, women treated badly. Not to mention, no belief in democracy itself. Because of those views, he had an appearance at Berkeley cancelled after student protests.
Students must learn that is is OK for speakers they disagree with to have a campus event. Everyone should be capable of speaking on campus, and if the college needs to spend extra money on security, a law against banning speakers for unpopular views will be a victory for free speech.
12
@Jerry S
Christianity was exactly the same as you describe Islam here in the US until the 60's. In fact many places to this day churches still hold an awful lot of power over the people and how their government and economy operates.
I did not know Maher had been blocked. That was stupid since he does actually discuss things. the "conservatives" they block don't discuss things they preach and mock and intend to wind people up to stop them from maintaining the habit of discussion.
Does thins ruling apply to religious institutions as well as secular ones? Would a student at Bringham Young who brought in a speaker on gay rights be defended in their right to speak. Would a talk at Notre Dame on abortions rights be allowed to take place? And would the students at Liberty University finally be allowed to have a club for supporters of the Democratic Party?
14
Yes, these rules will apply to religious institutions. There is only one college in the country that does not accept federal funds: Hillsdale in Michigan. The ruling will not apply to them because they don’t accept Title IV funds. However, every college that gives Pell grants will have to abide by this executive order.
4
I'm less optimistic than Mr Bauerlein. What will the colleges will now get from the students (sometimes with faculty enablers) with "historically disadvantaged identity" whose version of hope, happiness, and joy is to berate, insult, and shout down anyone they don't like? "Yeah, we totally get it, you have no choice." Really? How likely is that? All that is going to happen now is that administrators will be called disgusting, racist, misogynists etc. who are caving in to a fascist dictatorship etc. just to get money. The facts is that administrators are faced with exactly the same choice they have tried to duck since 1960s: throwing out disruptive students regardless what their identity is. Of course, if the students are really what they claim to be—noble, determined revolutionaries fighting an evil system—why would they care? Why does a revolutionary need a Yale degree?
6
Victim's "studies" students self identifying as "social justice warriors" often encouraged, actually pressured (professor grading assessment) into faux protesting.
6
Universities are places for discourse about all kinds of topics, but they are fundamentally academic institutions, so the terms of discourse should be based on evidence, scholarship, and analysis if the institution is going to sponsor a speaker. Under those conditions the University should be responsible for security and order. However, when a speaker is invited by a non-academic unit in the University, such as a student political group, and the speaker has little or no apparent value to advancing the discussion on an issue in the context of academic interests, the University should have no responsibility for hosting or protecting that speaker, although he or she should be allowed to speak. Those responsibilities should be shouldered by the people who invite the speaker.
It has become prohibitively expensive to protect non-academic speakers beloved of a small minority of students who are trying merely to get attention, when the speakers come largely to incite response from those who hold opposing views. The University should be blind to political orientation on these matters, and consider only the criteria of the Academy.
As to the opponents of such speakers, their best course is simply to stay away and refuse to provide the conflict and attention that the demagogues feed on. Let them come and go, and leave nothing memorable of their visits.
9
"This is a dilemma that outsiders don’t appreciate."
Bauerlein omits another factor -- there is not always a formal way to rebut speakers at the time.
Sometimes, there is a Q&A session at the end, but the host and the speaker are always in control of the microphone. Other times, the host is impartial in name only and asks "polite" questions.
(Based on previous Times reporting.)
1
@NSV
Students can either not go to the event, or discuss it with each other afterwards. Or the student paper can cover it.
When Hillary ran for President, did you EVER see someone ask hostile questions after her rallies. Did you ever see anyone question Trump after his rallies?
What the students who protest speakers and force cancellations of events really want is for no one to even hear a different opinion.
6
Jerry S: "Students can either not go to the event, or discuss it with each other afterwards. Or the student paper can cover it."
Sure, but fundamentally you would suppress direct interaction with the speaker. In contrast, watch some videos of Milo Yiannopoulos -- he encourages *direct interaction* with his audience. And he demolishes his critics, because he is a superb debater.
This comment needs to be take seriously:
"... the format of Murray’s talk did not allow for equal discussion." (Elizabeth Siyuan Lee)*
As for political rallies, those are not academic discussions. And if you intend to psychoanalyze mobs, please cite some reliable sources.
* Discord at Middlebury: Students on the Anti-Murray Protests
New York Times
March 7, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/discord-at-middlebury-students-on-the-anti-murray-protests.html
I look forward to the pro-choice speakers at Liberty U.
25
As someone who formerly worked with an inclusion-oriented student organization, I can tell you this is exactly false. The idea that minority students hold all this power at universities is laughable.
We tried again and again to get the university to agree to changes that we felt would make law school - an institution steeped in hierarchy and traditional power imbalances - a more welcoming place for students of color. They always promised to take our views into account, but would inevitably bow to other interests - donors, law firms...
Students protest because coming at the reputation of the institution is the only way we can make a dent - we have no money, and the university can easily wait us out in most circumstances.
It's maddening that the Times posts opinion after opinion with this framing. The reality is that public speakers at university are ABSOLUTELY already curated. Not just any person gets to speak. Credentials, popularity, power, visibility, platform, the ability to sell a ticket...and yes, controversy and social norms! These are all factors by which a school chooses speakers.
You are a thousand times more likely to see a Charles Murray than a black man with a felony conviction.
What if the school had a speaker who made a mockery of 9/11 or the Holocaust? Does the Bio department have to have climate-change deniers? I don't remember hearing a lot of NYTimes Op-Eds in support of Columbia's Ahmadinejad speech...
Whose speech do we even care about here?
11
The fact of the matter is that many college campuses HAVE become intolerant when it comes to aspects of "free speech" that some groups don't approve of. No one would support the rights of students promoting the KKK to dress in white sheets and burn crosses in the center of campus BUT there is an intolerance which has developed that not only tries to rebut types of speech but squelch it and even punish it. It's my view that, unless speakers become threatening in their speech, all viewpoints should be allowed to be discussed in a safe and open environment. In fact, the views of those we disagree with should be defended just the same as those we DO support under the argument that our own liberties are at stake once we allow the cherry-picking of what's good and what's bad. Shouting down or threatening retribution on those we don't agree with is not the proper atmosphere in universities where free ideas should run freely. It's HARD to support the right to speak when we dislike the message of the speaker but if you really believe in the principles that we purport to defend in the First Amendment, then shouting down or storming the stage when someone speaks words we don't like isn't the answer. This doesn't mean equal time for all, necessarily, but it does mean providing a free and safe space for everyone's views to be exchanged.
6
I was a member of the Oberlin College presidents advisory group in the 1980s, when there was also a cry for restrictions against hate speech that other colleges had instituted at the time. I spoke against this concept for the simply reason that life is filled with evil and pain, and people who don't think as they themselves do. I believed then-- and now--that students who were rightly offended by such speech could not, should not be protected from it. Students must learn in college to gird themselves against whatever awaits them in the larger world, so that they can react wisely and with moral strength. (I also said that students who uttered hate speech would learn about society's reaction to it might change. I hope some did.)
25
The real problem with allowing either censorship of speech or speakers is who gets to decide. I, for one, will not give up my right to hear or read information from any source I choose. I generally tend to be left of center in my views but I do not know a single person to whom I would give the right to determine what I can read and to whom I can listen. That is what it means to me to be in a free society. Stop the hecklers veto from the right and the left and bring back sanity.
As of college administrators fearing the adverse consequences of stopping hecklers, I say follow the money. By 2026, the “birth dearth” will hit in full force. We are already seeing colleges close at a rate of almost one each month and that rate will continue to accelerate for the next decade. College presidents do not want to call out students for poor behavior because the loss of tuition can be deadly. For the average small liberal arts institution, an enrollment shrinkage of 50 students can push it over the edge and cause a fiscal crisis from which it will never recover. This is one of the real reasons for the coddling of college students.
10
Yes, all speakers should be allowed to speak and be heard, other than those advocating violence against others, but I wonder how wide-spread a problem this is. It seems to occur mainly at "elite" universities, like Yale, or select very Progressive campuses.
As such, a small number of obnoxious and elite (as picked for such colleges) and "entitled" students are more annoying than a threat to the country, as they are often pictured by conservatives.
Eventually, they will grow up. The threat to democracy does not come from the left.
9
@Peter Wolf
Tell this to all the observant Jewish kids heckled on daily basis by BDS. To all the speakers whose talks were cancelled for security reasons. All cancelled talks, most of the heckling comes from the left, and progressive groups that think that free speech applies only to them.
The right at the extreme is awful so is the left. The sooner we learn that and don’t allow the extremes to set speech rules and behaviors the better we will be.
College kids should not be able to threaten, scare or discriminate against their pairs for having different opinions... they most definitively should not be able to cancel talks by threatening violence... and they should not throw tantrums when they don’t get their way.
If they are not able to act in a civilized way, they don’t belong in college, where the debate is about ideas- not about the loudest voice. In fact it might be good for their education to be confronted and not get their way once in a while
2
I don't agree that university leaders are principally motivated by fear of their students, or by concerns about their reputation. The students are citizens who have a Constitutional right to free speech and peaceful protest. That, I believe, is these leaders' principal motivation. They are also strongly motivated by concerns about safety and cost. Last year, at the university with which we are affiliated, a Trump supporter shot a protestor during a pro-Trump event. The extra security needed for a single pro-Trump speaker will cost a university hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more. Why are these administrators silent now, even in the rare cases when they might agree with the writer? You don't praise a broken clock because it is correct twice a day. Trump's motivation here is all wrong. He is biased and partisan, and would if he could stifle both the right to free speech and the right to peaceful protest.
6
Robert,
Please reread the US Constitution. There is no “right of free speech.” The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the GOVERNMENT from abridging free speech. This covers government at all levels from local to federal. It also means that all public institutions of higher learning as well as public schools are deemed to be part of the government subject to the same restrictions as other governmental bodies. Private institutions at all levels are free to write their own speech codes but may subject themselves to governmental oversight if they accept governmental funding. As an attorney, I get tired of people yelling about a Constitutional “right” that does not exist.
14
@Baltimore Eagle
Thank you for your clarification. You are correct. Our own university is a state university, which is considered a governmental body. It is worth noting that virtually all of the better private universities receive significant governmental funding. To what degree does that subject them to the same requirements?
5
He’s not actually correct, however tired he gets.
First off, one may certainly find in the First Amendment a general right of free speech, within certain limits. Otherwise, there’re no rights at all in the Bill of Rights. He’d do better to try and ground this on the Fifth Amendment, which (sort of) allows government to torture you for info, thought you cannot then use said info in court.
Second off, AAUP guidelines as well as local regs guarantee what’s called, “academic freedom,” and this is generally extended to mean free speech rights, provided you’re not demanding witch-burning now or something else daft. often, it’s in union contracts...within limits, such as you can’t lead prayers in class, and keep the cussing to a minimum. An attorney should be familiar with a least a tad bit if the case law on this.
5
Nothing in the article says anything about university’s ability to choose speakers. Nor does it prevent student protest. The intent is once the speaker is there, after being invited by the university, no one can take action to prevent the speaker being seen and heard. Pretty standard rules for anyone that went to a university before 2010.
19
The problem with Trump’s executive order is that in general Trump poisons everything he touches. Even when he does something sort of reasonable he does it so patently for all the wrong reasons and with corrupt intent and motivation, that he alienates even sensible people who might agree with core elements of the action itself, leading them to retreat into defending a position they actually know is not entirely defensible.
To wit: many college professors, including very liberal ones like myself, sense that colleges’ insistence these days on sheltering students from anything that might upset them, including ideas that are perhaps disagreeable politically but cannot reasonably be argued to be true hate speech, is raising some genuine free speech concerns and is at odds with academic traditions of free debate and inquiry. What to do about it? I don’t know - smart, rational people should get together, debate the issue and reach some hopefully helpful conclusions. The problem is that Trump is neither smart nor rational, nor does he care one iota about freedom of speech - he’s simply trying to assert his dominance and stick it to the liberals. So a heavy-handed measure like his executive order, that is completely disproportionate to the actual (quite minor) size of the problem, is unlikely to do anything to improve the situation or move the conversation forward on this topic.
18
@Math Professor
I agree that even when Trump does something vaguely right, it's for the wrong reasons.
But it should be pointed out that this madness on campus is not new, but has only been growing in intensity over the past decade. None of the reasonable people on campus have had the courage to stand up to these absurdist children, and have allowed a kind of tyranny to take over institutions of higher learning.
I too have worked in academia for nearly 25 years, and everyone is walking on eggshells, knowing that they are one misunderstanding or one off-script statement away from literally being ruined by a braying mob, and a gutless administration who refuses to create order on campus. This does not create a place where freedom of exchange and debate can happen.
13
"... many college professors, including very liberal ones like myself, ..."
Would you tolerate a student screaming about sexism in mathematics during one of your lectures? Surely, even "liberal" professors have some standards.
"What to do about it? I don’t know - smart, rational people should get together, debate the issue and reach some hopefully helpful conclusions."
Presumably, you are smart and rational enough to suggest some ideas of your own instead of just complaining about Trump.
5
Piffle. The same kind of piffle I’ve heard for decades from straight white guys upset because they can’t hang six-foot long pix of chicks in bikinis behind their desk anymore, especially since they’re spozed to be the student advisor, or tell a ckassroom that they don’t know why the Mexican girls are there, since they should be home cooking dinner.
And yes, I know for a fact that this happened.
1
Here again is a NYTimes writer missing the entire point. Bauerlein is fine with white supremacists and eugenicist being given a platform at a university. Charles Murray shouldn't be allowed to speak because his book has been thoroughly debunked. The models he uses to show a linear relationship with IQ and outcomes are weak. The R squared measurement of his models show a weak relationship but he hides this in the back of the book. People like Murray know that their work can't stand criticism so they resort to blaming pc culture.
The reason these people shouldn't be allowed to speak is because their ideas are dangerous and outdated. The pseudoscience of the 19th century shouldn't be taken seriously at such institutions. Furthermore, they bring direct harm to poc. How come its ok for people like Murray to go around stating how poc are just inferior compared to white people? Would white people be ok with speakers who talked about their race being inferior? These arguments support apartheid, segregation, violence, and oppression.
But im sure the Mark would say that the best way to combat these ideas is about debate. However, despite these ideas being disproved over the last couple centuries, they still persist because it isn't about reason. What they want is a platform and you're falling for it
6
"The reason these people shouldn't be allowed to speak is because their ideas are dangerous and outdated."
And who decides which ideas are "dangerous and outdated"? By what standard? Please consider the possibility that many people would think your ideas are dangerous and outdated ...
20
@al Charles Murrary's book is bunk? That sure is news to me. IQ just like most things in nature is distribute via a gaussian random variable. IQ CAN be used to make predictions but there are multiple factors that of course effect whole life success.
I don't think Murray was criticizing PC culture in 1994... They do not bring direct harm to POC they are merely looking for data to explain what we see in the world.
You talk a lot about POC vs whites what about Asians? They have a higher average IQ and also have a higher average income. Does this mean that all other race are inferior to the master Asian race INCLUDING white people?
"Would white people be ok with speakers who talked about their race being inferior?"
4
@al
No one who has actually READ Murray's book would think it is bunk - you can disagree with his methodology and conclusions but to claim it is 'bunk' describes the close-mindedness this legislation is combatting.
4
So Donald Trump who routinely denounces the press as the enemy of the people and who has calls his political adversaries and those who disagree with him traitors is a support of free speech on campus and professes deep concerns for the First Amendment. What a hoot. This gives hypocrisy a bad name.
20
On the other hand, I don’t think they’re going to enjoy having to pretend Coulter and Milo and their ilk are serious thinkers deserving of a forum, when really they’re just rabble rousers hoping a protest happens so they can demand a platform based on their “victim” status.
Be careful what you wish for!
5
No-one who reads or writes for the NY Times likes Donald Trump. None of its readers or writers understands how any intelligent person could have voted for him. If you read this column, you may understand why.
"the administration couldn’t come down on her without compromising its pledges of inclusivity and anti-discrimination and sensitivity."
The Liberal left and the "establishment" have paralysed their own sense of proportion and right-and-wrong. They are afraid to open their mouths. They kow-tow, They scourge themselves with mea culpas.
Horrible, vile, narcissistic, bombastic, vindictive Trump was the only candidate unafraid to speak up. Come on, now, Times readers. Isn't it awful that only a man like that had the guts to say that the emperor had no clothes? Think about that the next time you try to get virtue points by calling someone sexist or racist.
35
Trump has the guts to say the Emperor has no clothes? Emperor Trump is stark naked and always has been.
2
Gee, I sure hope you're right, Professor Bauerlein.
The problem, though, is that sighs of relief by university administrators cannot quell the fire in the belly of campus social justice warriors, whose #1, not-so-secret wish is to make the evening news - chanting defiantly - hauled off by metro cops. (No college president would be stupid enough to use the campus police for such messy work.)
Trump could read the ingredients from a can of vegetable soup and progressives would protest.
12
@Hugo Furst Hey, that would be good IQ test for him. Progressives protest not only his incessant lying but his profound and willful ignorance on any subject. He wouldn't (actually he couldn't) read the ingredients, he'd make them up.
I wonder about restitution to the faculty who were punished during the Obama years for nothing else but exercising THEIR first amendment rights.
6
Professor Bauerlein is correct that university administrators' acquiescence to the radical leftist activists on their campuses is not a matter of anti-conservative bias. It's about cowardice.
Nobody has the guts to challenge these foolish young people when they claim they are literally "injured" because a visiting 75 year old Charles Murray wrote one chapter in a larger book 40 years ago which challenges the orthodoxy that we're all biologically the same. Nobody is made to actually feel "unsafe" because Christina Hoff Sommers, a 65 year old feminist, questions some of the current left-wing orthodoxy on feminism.
Universities' paralysis at the hands of the theatrically "aggrieved" bullies in their midst speaks to at least two problems of our modern era: the lack of self-confidence among grown-ups to act like adults among children, and the enormous power the label "victim" even when said "victim" is among the most privileged human beings on earth.
Let's hope this new federal mandate will stiffen their spines.
37
Many of the comments are disturbing to me since they are one-sided and include unnecessary name calling. I would invite anyone to read the letter to the president of Oral Roberts University by Candice Jackson, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, dated Dec1,2017. It is amazing what speech religious institutions that receive federal support are able to prohibit and the level of discrimination allowed in admission and other activities. The day a pro-abortion speech can be delivered on that or other religious campuses is the day I believe in free speech.
15
@John Thomas
Freezepeachers don't care about that.
Free speech works both ways. I now look forward to Catholic and conservative universities welcoming speakers who are evolution scientists, atheist intellectuals, pro-choice advocates, and LGBT rights activists, and guaranteeing them a safe space to have their say in front of a quiet and compliant student body. Thanks, Mr. President!
40
@Jason Only applies to public colleges. Private schools can teach whatever they want.
1
I strongly agree that our colleges and universities should be places — if not THE
places — for the free exchange of ideas. That it should take the threat of withholding
federal funds to enforce such a policy as Free Speech is shameful, but it’s the administrators and faculty
of our colleges and universities, themselves, who should be ashamed for their decades-long
cowardly capitulation to political correctness and to the radical-Left agenda practiced on most
of our campuses. If the author is correct, the cowardly will continue their cowardice by blaming
Trump for insisting Free Speech be practiced on their campuses. Brave New World. We must wake up and jump
out of the water before we’re boiled to death!
5
Most prominent so-called conservative voices are unworthy of respect or a podium from which to spew their bile. The "both sides have good ideas" nostrum was a mistake, is a mistake, and should be left in the dustbin of history.
6
I totally agree that people expressing hateful, racist or otherwise unpopular views should be allowed to express them on campus. Just because we don't like Trump doesn't mean that everything he says is necessarily wrong.
And if a historically disadvantaged student at Yale or some other school refuses to accept the right of people on the other side to express their hateful views, let that person leave. There are plenty of others to fill the spot.
7
This is one of those actions that sounds like a good idea, until the first lawsuits start pouring in from anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and SJWs demanding equal time on campuses.
The obvious problem with Trump's Alt-right Welfare Act is that it's not limited to the alt-right.
3
Hey everyone. I learned so many cool things from this article, especially as a 'historically disadvantaged' person!
1. Highly paid college administrators are the real victims of things like racism and rape culture, because they have been "intimidated" into showing "respect" for these issues....and by some college kids, which must feel embarrassing for them.
"Administrators want open inquiry and lively debate, but the students often have a historically disadvantaged identity that the college leaders feel they must respect — African-Americans against racism, women against rape culture."
2. Being threatened because of your race, gender, or other aspect of your identity doesn't actually have to do with Open and Lively Debate! (see quote above)
Y'all I always thought it did! I thought: not being assaulted or harassed by my professor, or not having my life and safety threatened by my classmates would be good for my ability to debate in class. Turns out: nope!
3. Do Administrators tokenize Historically Disadvantaged students to sell our image and thereby disregard our humanity? Yes. But people, these administrators are in danger and need our protection! They are can easily 'intimidated', and that would be bad. They need us to behave like good Tokens so the Brand looks good. Being "upset and angry" about racism, sexism, homophobia or xenophobia doesn't look good. We need to be "happy" and "hopeful" so that Open and Lively Debate can prosper on campus!!
7
Stop pretending that people like Ben Shapiro and organizations like Turning Points USA are just well-meaning conservatives trying to get a message across. They use intentionally deceptive tactics to incite hatred and cause harm. Milo Yiannopoulos has not only personally harassed transgender students, but also planned on releasing the names of every undocumented immigrant attending UC Berkeley. This "free speech" facade is really about causing as much harm as possible to the most vulnerable people in hopes to "destroy" the left.
12
@Connor What exactly has Ben Shapiro done that rankles you? He speaks at a microphone, and then take questions from audience members, including those who despise him. Problem?
16
No. It's about provoking a hysterical reaction from the left so that they can claim leftists are anti-free speech. Everybody seems to play the same game.
1
@Erik His ludicrous comments on trans people incite literal violence. He misgenders people on purpose. He engages in numerous logical fallacies to argue that trans people shouldn't exist. He wrote a book that instructs people not to debate liberals but to destroy them. He's completely uninterested in inquiry and when you question him, he employs the gish gallup fallacy
1
This piece is telling. The author can't muster a single source in academia to corroborate his claims of widespread (yet curiously secret!) pro-Trump glee.
His presentation of the supposedly-silenced campus conservative is a gross misrepresentation. I work on a large college campus. I walk by a Koch-funded booth most days. It is glossy and continuously-manned. Next I walk by a doomsday preacher. He screams threats at students, particularly LGBT ones. He'd be in jail if the implied perpetrator of the future violence weren't Jehovah. I asked him who pays him. He replied, 'a group of churches.' I asked him, 'local churches?' He wouldn't respond.
Don't forget when you read this article: To conservatives, free speech means the freedom to dump money into a communication system, not the bizarre fiction presented in this article, where a quaver-voiced individual is victimized by hordes of angry libs. Look no further than Citizens United, etc.
The real goal of these "First Things"-types is to flood the physical landscape of the American undergraduate with fascist propaganda. It's a good strategy. It worked for the television advertising landscape; the GOP now runs most state legislatures.
15
@Daniel McClosky "with fascist propaganda"
Good god lefties are so boringly predictable. Nazi this and Nazi that. Some guy with the last name Shapiro = Nazi.
We just want people to be treated fairly by public institutions regardless of their ideas.
1
@Daniel McClosky
You had me until the rather bizarre definition of free speech " the freedom to dump money into a communication system" - you really believe that defines free speech?
'Even a conservative should object to this federal intrusion into academic affairs.'
Is that so? Since when are the academics so far above the simple folks who are represented by the federal government? Perennially entitled to the monies we all pay them to exist, and on the condition that we are not allowed to say a cinch to those gigantic, super-smart egos? We only can and should agree with whatever their, always 'liberal' or 'progressive', politics is? Otherwise, we are, what, fascists?
5
Just to provide a bit of context about the publication for which Mr. Bauerlein is a senior editor: "First Things is an ecumenical, conservative and, in some views, neoconservative religious journal aimed at "advanc[ing] a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society". Wikipedia.
Nothing wrong or right about that, but a fundamental aspect of information literacy is understanding the underlying perspective of an author that are reflected in their writing.
Thanks.
12
@Scott
Yeah, the free speecher wants to "organize society" based on his belief in ghosts. My one hope is that I don't die before I see religious conservatives driven into the sea.
Trump's "free inquiry" and speech means god-story dogma cannot be suppressed in academia.
It's not just "creationism" in biology; it's also astronomy, geology, logic, history and all evidence based research and teaching. It is nothing less than an assault on academia in general--aiming to replace it with marketing.
Marketing does not aim at the best belief given the available evidence. It aims at separating fools from their money or votes--the more fools the better.
4
Last I read. almost everything mentioned is already law
4
This is a bad take. Universities have choice about who they invite to speak. Students have always had the right to protest speakers. To suggest that administrators shut down activists is really alarming, especially coming from a White male, whose category benefits from the status quo. I think we need to understand why students are angry. I hardly think Yale's brand was damaged by the student protesting - probably the admissions scandal is much more damaging, along with the understanding that legacy and wealth play a big role in the makeup of the student body at many private colleges. For understanding, I suggest you read: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pacific-heart/201511/the-assault-the-american-mind which is a response to Haidt's "Coddling of the American Mind."
6
@Ravi Chandra It's not about shutting down protest..... It's about treating the different ideologies fairly. As in letting conservatives speak
5
@Russian Bot
Racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, belief in the supernatural, cultural supremacy, hierarchies and misogyny are not ideas that should be treated "fairly." They are lesser, outdated ideas, peddled by demagogues and fools.
Conservatives and liberals aren't the only two ideologies. I look forward to advocating Communist revolution or anarchism in America on college campuses in the future.
The claim that conservatives are shouted down by intolerant radicals at universities is a fiction.
The cases the press parades around (and this includes the NYT) are overwhelmingly PR stunts created by far-right provocateurs for the express purpose of generating the kind of outrage that can then serve to illustrate this fiction.
These are, in short, cases of live-action trolling.
The author of this piece, in keeping with NYT practice, ignores that Turning Point USA and other organizations of the right engage in McCarthyism against professors whose valid, conscientous academic work contradicts conservative beliefs on matters such as climate change, gender, race relations, and capitalism.
TP USA maintains a "Professor Watchlist," and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has documented dozens of cases where individual faculty members were subjected to campaigns of targeted harassment by TP USA and similar groups.
Trump's decree is an endorsement of these groups, their fictional world-view, and their McCarthyite practices. It backs up the live-action trolls with the full force of federal financing.
This will become a cover for the firing of dissident academics and the expulsion of student activists. It is designed to become such a cover.
25
@Lars Maischak
If they are a 'fiction' how can they possibly be cited in the NYT? You do understand that fictions do not really occur?
1
Mark Bauerlein makes some good points, but doesn't have the space to paint a full picture. The Virtue Test is killing the academy (although there's no reason to think the ultra-right will revive it).
Recently, a major editor of poetry reported that a well-published poet had been disciplined by another journal. Why? He'd used the word 'deafened' in a poem. It was required of the poet that he change the word to 'silenced' because 'deafened' was considered Ablist. In poetry -- I'm not making this up.
In Humanities, the threat is to the entire last 2500 years of reading. Take the best of Roman or Greek poetry ... and 3/4 of a typical English class could opt out of it, by hovering in a Safe Space so they don't have to listen. For the remaining 1/4, they can kick a story off the curriculum because the story is Voice Appropriation. Now, who should deal with this? Not Donald Trump, but college senates with guts.
40
Perhaps parents should start weighing in. After all it is they who make the sacrifices enabling their child to attend. Why spend all that money so your child can be told he can keep on behaving like a child?
5
@Carling Who is the poet and where did you get this info. I cannot seem to find it.
2
"... I'm not making this up."
OK, but without a reliable source, it is impossible for anyone else to read the story for themselves. Please name the editor, poet, and journals you allude to in your anecdote.
The main claim in this article, as expressed in the headline, may or not be true but there is literally no evidence provided. The author is simply claiming that since administrators will now be under threat of losing funding, they have good reason not to cancel any speakers or guests due to student protest. I find it hard to believe this will make them happy and the idea that this order will be enforced fairly and won’t be abused by forcing schools to host tons of unsavory characters is pretty naive.
8
@Steve
Excellent point
2
25 years ago, colleges and universities were America's pride and joy. What happened? Tuitions and student debt skyrocketed, making higher ed a luxury good. Marxist deconstructionism, intersectionality, and identity politics metastasized, killing intellectual diversity. Affirmative action, sports, legacy, and crooked admissions along with "studies" programs lowered standards and merit-based equality and promoted grade inflation. Tens of thousands of high-priced corp-type administrators and "development" (money-grubbers) officials were hired, while actual teaching was given a low priority. Students were treated as feckless customers instead of true pupils.
Trump's exec order may not help or may not even be the right response, but it is a healthy first step in one respect: it acknowledges that something has gone terribly wrong at our colleges and universities.
43
@Chris-zzz
Deconstructionism comes from Heidegger, who is last time I checked, about as far away from Marxism as you can get. And the essentialist (almost nationalistic) notion of identity pushed by current proponents of identity politics is the very opposite of Derrida's take on identity, which he considered always provisional and in process of reinvention. I bring this up not to be pedantic, but to point out that critiques of the academy tend to iron out divisions and frame things as a battle between the identity people and the Trump people. As someone who works in the academy and who thinks there is a very real problem with how political pious students stifle debate, but who also thinks an intervention by Trump will only make this worse, I think it is essential that we look to those positions already in the academy that oppose both the purism of student zealots and the know-nothingism of Trump and his ilk.
15
@Chris-zzz,
Please don't blame Marx for this. Post-Modernism was invented by mid-20th century French intellectuals (Derrida, Foucalt, etc.) who felt hopeless after WWII. It didn't gain much traction until the fall of the Soviet Union, after which many Marxist intellectuals felt hopeless. Post-modernism is a bottomless pit of nihilism and its toxic effects can hardly be overstated.
Marx was essentially on-the-money with his analysis of capitalism. The problem he did not solve, and which still remains to be solved, is how to extract ourselves from capitalism.
3
Good for you, being pedantic. Exactly right, too, though I do think Derrida’s intellectual roots run a tad deeper than Heidegger, or deMan, for that matter.
Point is, these clowns just stick words together and throw them at the nearest wall, rather than lifting a finger to try and do some reading first.
And not only do they always end up confessing that they themselves want colleges scrubbed clean of certain...things...their screaming refusal to know what they’re talking about is far worse than even the dumber yelling we’ve seen from pseudo-leftists on campus.
One also wonders why they think some yelling is the worst thing in the world. No hitting, no threatening, mind you. But if there was a time American colleges were actually the happy intellectual bunnylands they seem to think they should be, I am not sure just when that was.
2
Agreed that this is a good thing for colleges. Minorities or not, free speech exists, and civility must be maintained or everyone can go to live in China or Russia.
13
@simon
Unless the protesting students are really “crisis actors” planted by conservative organizations to create the appearance of academic intolerance.
Reminds me of the arguments against the Fairness Doctrine...except in reverse.
This column makes some very good points. The scourge of shout-downs, callings-out and deplatforming is rife and mestastasizing across the university landscape. Sadly, few college deans and administrators, aside from U of Chicago and a handful of others, have had the moral rectitude to stand up to their student mobs. To the extent that the Trump order gives them cover to finally do so, great!
18
As I recall the exercise of free speech played an important role in ending America's central role in a war that cost at least two million Vietnamese lives and sent 58,000 (mostly draftees) American home in body bags. It may have not been elegant but then, again, stopping the genocide of civilian populations has rarely ever been elegant.
What's the point of this article? Hooray for the cowards heading up America's institutions of "higher learning" that can now hide behind Trump's apron stings?
How about, instead, making the point that the principle of academic freedom is being further obliterated by the military-industrial complex that views the permanent "war on terror" as the "gift that keeps on giving" and that anybody who raises questions on that score is a direct threat to every CEO's second or third vacation home somewhere in the Caribbean?
5
"These students intimidate the highest officials in a university more than outsiders can imagine. A student at Yale yelling at the professor who tried to reason with her did tremendous damage to Yale’s brand, but the administration couldn’t come down on her without compromising its pledges of inclusivity and anti-discrimination and sensitivity."
So, it appears the author is making two points. First, underrepresented students are a problem that "administrators" are unable to solve. Second, they are a problem because they are expressing the very diversity of opinions that they were brought in to contribute to university debates.
This is nothing more than a right-wing anti-affirmative action screed.
16
@bluebob: [ they are expressing the very diversity of opinions that they were brought in to contribute to university debates.]
They can express their opinions as much as they want as long as they do not prevent others from enjoying the same right.
23
if you can't distinguish between "expressing a diversity of opinions" and screaming at someone, calling them everything short of a fascist, and demanding they not be heard at all, you're part of the problem.
3
@Vinny: Why do you say "short of a fascist"? They are called that, too.
2
This article is essentially correct. In the short term the Trump menace is a god-send. However, schools must enforce BOTH the right to free inquiry and the freedom to not be coerced by Trump. Inquiry is its own law.
I suggest that left-leaning faculty have other options. For example, why not move their preaching ways into an inquiry venue? Such as a cross-country Commission of Inquiry (like Bertram Russell's) to examine evidence of Trump criminality? Then, watch the so-called Free-speech conservatives attempt to break that up with violence. That's inevitable, but will clarify the hypocrisy of the far-right.
8
As a leftist, anti-capitalist millennial, I still find Mark Bauerlin’s “The Dumbest Generation” to be a cogent indictment of the impact of technology on education and civil society in America. Prior to his descent into some unholy mixture of Douthatism and Trumpism, he really did raise some valid points about how liberals and pro-business conservatives alike refuse to acknowledge that technology is not improving education outcomes in any measurable way, nor is it delivering on its promise to bring about greater equality between racial and socioeconomic groups by flattening barriers to information.
Bauerlin has demonstrated an ability to cut through consensus rhetoric to advance a much-needed, highly readable contrarian corrective to blind assumptions. That makes it all the more frustrating to see him among the legion of right-wing “intellectuals” who have had so much success in implanting within consensus rhetoric the notion that college campuses are places of anti-conservative, anti-religious free speech suppression.
I have yet to encounter anything resembling the much-publicized “free speech incidents” at my public university in North Carolina. There is a free speech problem in American higher education, but the epicenter is not Berkley or Yale. Instead it is places like Liberty University, where professors must give a statement of faith in which they profess a belief in creationism. Somehow these schools escape the ire of conservative free speech advocates...
80
No one can disagree with the reasoned points made in this article regarding the exchange of ideas, but there is a central flaw; a Fallacy of Composition that selectively anoints a vocal minority of bad actors ("...some students"...) as representatives of liberalism, or college students as a whole.
I see the motivation behind this order as primarily political, an effort to backhandedly legitimize the common but unfounded talking point that circulates on the right that "conservatives" (whatever that means these days...) are widely persecuted on college campuses.
And what would be the real world implementation of this order, pulling grants because an unruly student heckles a speaker, or one who makes their living as a professional provocateur?
5
The action occurs if the university just sits on their hands and does nothing. Some people will always be rude and crude. When they break the rules, the school has to take action. The rules were and are already there.
1
@Michael Blazin Rules? What rules? Rules against speaking up? It is not rude and crude to protest against people trying to elevate discrimination and hatred as "opinions" subject to free speech.
1
"But the administration couldn’t come down on her without compromising its pledges of inclusivity and anti-discrimination and sensitivity."
I'm afraid I just don't get that. Inclusivity, anti-discrimination, and sensitivity do not require that we suppress free speech or tolerate poor behavior.
A student who is unable to behave appropriately in a university setting doesn't belong in a university setting. All universities do when they allow this kind of behavior is insure that it will persist.
42
If "open inquiry and lively debate" requires hosting the likes of Ben Shapiro, and listening to him respectfullly, whatever happened to standards?
Haven't we been told for years that "cultural relativism", this notion that every voice must be heard, was the greatest threat to Western civilization?
13
@jrd
I remember being impressed with the ACLU on it's stance that they defend the KKK's right to free speech. By not allowing someone whose views you adamantly disagree with, to speak; you are implying that their views will be more persuasive than your own.
Let them have their say. Then host a debate on the views presented.
5
@Sharon
I'm not arguing that Ben Shapiro shouldn't be silenced by the state. And, in any event, the ACLU has never argued that everyone has a right to broadcast his views as a paid guest on college campuses, any more than NYT, NPR or NBC are obliged to air the views of Noam Chomsky twice a week.
I'm inquiring as to why "conservatives" who constantly bemoan the loss of academic standards on college campuses, would make a "free speech" case in favor of likes of Ben Shapiro, on college campuses.
@jrd: You are not being required to listen to him.
Colleges and universities should be bastions of free speech... for all speech.
The idea that they should be “safe spaces” meant to protect students from offensive speech or ideas is absolutely ridiculous.
Colleges and universities should be where students are exposed to new ideas, even if those ideas make them uncomfortable. This is the time in most students lives that they are most likely to meet a wide array of people from different backgrounds and experiences.
They should not be bastions of ideological purity and intolerance (see Evergreen State College or UC Berkeley).
I support this order because all ideas and viewpoints should be protected on campus.
87
@LegalEagle Would you include the march by Neo-Nazis through the University of Virginia in Charlottesville as free speech that must be protected? I would not.
@LegalEagle See Liberty University
1
@DMN ALL speech should be protected on campuses. All demonstrations should be protected, though limited through (content neutral) reasonable time and place restrictions.
Students should be exposed to all ideas, whether that speech supports black power or white power, globalism or nationalism, capitalism or socialism.
Students can choose whether to attend or not, but should be given the option to attend.
The First Amendment applies to everyone, not just the speech you agree with.
5
I work at a middle level public university in Michigan with a student body made up mostly of state residents (many of whom are commuters), and I see exactly zero examples of any professors or speakers being shouted down or threatened in any way.
I do not doubt this goes on at more elite institutions, but I have to ask whether these events and the actors involved only represent a small percentage of both institutions and students nationwide.
And if so, isn't it likely that these actions (and the current reaction by the president) are both mainly attention-grabbing stunts to score political points? Of course universities and colleges should protect free speech and all speakers, however unpopular. But isn't all of this creating a bad reputation for hundreds of schools and millions of fair-minded students that don't deserve one?
28
@Bryan: [I see exactly zero examples of any professors or speakers being shouted down or threatened in any way.]
I have.
2
@Allen
OK. So what would say is the extent of all of this?
Trump's order presumably applies to conservative colleges as well as liberal ones, and the former may have reason to fear its reach, too. In 2009, Hope College in Holland, Michigan, cancelled an on-campus talk by screenwriter Dustin Lance Black because of his advocacy for gay rights. Black was shooting a film in the area and was invited by a student and the English Department to speak on campus. But when the college administration found out, he was told to stay away.
112
@David P. It would make sense the the same rules would apply to Hope College. I doubt very much that Hope College, a small institution without any graduate research programs, receives very much funding from the federal government.
1
Will this Order apply to speech by Rep. Omar on college campus's? Other supporters of the so-called BDS movement? Don't get me wrong. Omar and BDS people are folks with whom I disagree, but the Trump administration seems inconsistent at the very least in defending "free speech".
21
@Ben
On the contrary, Ben, I suspect that Trump, deep down, is thrilled when Rep. Omar speaks and thus provides him with what he can use as ammunition.
5
@Ben I hope so. I can't stand Omar or BDS, but I hate the censorship culture on campuses even more.
26
In other words, the administration doesn't want to admit that Trump did something possibly right. This inability--or unwillingness--to acknowledge the other side has a valid point is why we are so politically polarized. The schools that have this issue tend to have single digit acceptance rates. Do you really think if "offended" students transfer someone just as qualified won't take their place? They can still charge the 50,000$ per year, too. The administrators are an army of toadies catering to these entitled brats. I should know, I'm one of them. The latter, that is.
63
This is a classic case of a solution looking for a problem.
It has nothing to do with conservatives or conservatism. Campuses are not hostile to political dialogue. While the majority of faculty members are "liberal," it is because too many conservative views are anti-intellectual.
Trump's "order" is an in-your-face imposition of loudmouth nasties like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter, who have nothing to add to vigorous political discourse. Trump's position is equivalent to insisting that every household watch Fox News for an hour or so every night.
Yes, a few students have gone overboard on a few campuses, but it is not a problem requiring presidential intervention. The idea that Trump wants free speech on campuses is ludicrous. The press is the "enemy of the people." He encourages violence against protestors at his rallies.
Some noxious people should be excluded from college campuses. Having an open mind doesn't mean you have to let your brain fall out. Students who protest certain speakers are well within their legal and ethical rights. Universities should protect their interests, not those of right wing celebrities.
64
@Barking Doggerel -- the fact that the President's order may create the exact opposite effect intended is the best reason to support it. I'm old enough to remember the free-speech movement at UC Berkley back in the '60s. It was true then, and it still is. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Loudmouths like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter are the best reason to open the doors. Any college student who can be swayed by their nonsense will find it elsewhere. Everyone else benefits from knowing their adversary just a little better.
13
@Barking Doggerel Who decides that Ann Coulter..."has nothing to add to vigorous political discourse?" What do you not like? Her position opposing the law breakers that are illegal aliens or Ms. Coulter's general support of Republicans and other conservatives?
Present day college students at many institutions are pampered babies who would not have the courage to appear and speak to a hostile conservative audience, like Ms. Coulter does on liberal campuses. These children (students) need the protection of the mob to act against speakers with whom they disagree. They are pathetic.
11
@Barking Doggerel
"Some noxious people should be excluded from college campuses."
I'm sorry, but freedom of speech is not about excluding those one disagrees with. That's dictatorship.
I don't like Coulter and Yiannopoulos any more than you do, but it is not my place or yours to dictate to others what they can and cannot hear.
82
I predict that most student bodies will rightfully continue to protest hate speech on campus by deplatforming repugnant, astroturfed charlatans like Ben Shapiro, who preach hate under the protection of some hazy interpretation of the First Amendment that somehow protects the rights of conservatives to openly incite hate and violence against everyone they don't like. Nope, that's not what the first amendment does, and universities who test the ability of their students to express themselves in civil protest serious issues will feel the sting of bad press and worse outcomes.
13
@dylanhume87
Charles Murray is one of America's leading sociologists.
The solution to fringe and crank speakers is not to invite them, and to stay away if they are invited. Not to disrupt their speeches.
The incitement of violence seems to be mostly coming from the Left.
7
@dylanhume87 I think you may need to read up on some First Amendment jurisprudence as your interpretation is mistaken.
Start by contrasting these cases:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._Black
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.V._v._City_of_St._Paul
2
@dylanhume87
Shapiro? Hate speech?
Your mischaracterization of Shapiro is dramatic evidence of the need to protect free speech.
And yes, the first amendment protects the right of people to incite hate -- just as, I note, you have here incited hate against conservatives (of whom I don't happen to be one).
4
Could anyone give an example of an actual speech code at a university today?
How do such codes work? How is it determined what can or cannot be said? And what kind of punishments are involved for offenders?
3
According to FIRE, it seems, a speech "code" does not actually have to be codified, and it does not have to exist at a university that is bound by the First Amendment.
@Charles E Flynn
So these "codes" are all liberals trying to muzzle conservatives, or is this Fire organization about protecting *everyone's* free speech?
Because I can remember back in the 1980s where there were a whole bunch of conservatives visiting universities to "monitor" the views of liberal professors.
2
When did the United States become a controlled state, ruled by conservatives who do not allow for free speech or open dialogue?
Seems that anything else but the accepted view will now be punished .
George Orwell had it right on so many levels in his novel 1984.
Who would have though Big Brother was living and existing in the U.S.A?
This is not good.
8
As a former university professor, I can attest that the university as an open forum for all positions and ideas is an ideal for which we have to constantly work and strive. Free speech is not just for those we agree with but for those we don't. Democracy is largely important for its emphasis on protecting the rights of the minority. But shouting down any opinion or position we don't like has the same "closing of the mind" affect as banning it or censoring it.
122
I support this initiative by Trump. The notion that students can silence their teachers because they find new ideas disturbing or unpalatable is contrary to the very definition of liberal education. Incidentally, I find students in Europe, Asia and even the Middle East much more open-minded than the politically correct American millennials. Nothing is more ridiculous than some American snowflake objecting to a frank discussion of Islam that Muslim students take in their stride, or a Twitter mob descending upon a white student wearing a cheongsam that Chinese shopkeepers are only too happy to sell her. A student who needs trigger warnings does not belong in college.
212
Your use of the word "snowflake" kind of gives away your starting position. You on the extreme right would do well to stop calling people you disagree with names.
9
@Theodore R I am actually a liberal and a registered Democrat. But your response is a perfect example of the mindset that needs to be totally eradicated if American universities have any hope to survive. Everything you don’t like is labeled “extreme right” and dismissed. If “snowflake” is an insult, what about “fascist”, “Nazi”, “racist”, “baby-killer” and antisemitic drivel I heard hurled at conservative professors and speakers on American campuses? Nowhere else would such behavior be tolerated. When I teach in the US, it is not tolerated in my classes either. But I can’t wait to teach again in civilized countries where thinking, facts and learning are respected, not denigrated.
6
This is good to hear that college administrators and professors do secretly agree that college campuses have become intolerant places and the balance needs to be restored. What is disheartening though is that the same college administrators and professors are not brave enough to do it on their own and have opened the door to this type of action. If they decry this government intervention then they have to find their courage to deal with it and unfortunately they have not and they cannot. Whose to blame here the government stepping in to protect speech or the cowardice of the administrators?
47
At a dinner party, GB Shaw was sitting next to a young woman. He asked her if she would sleep with him for a million pounds. After a bit of thought, she replied, "Yes." Then he asked her if she would sleep with him for ten pounds. "Certainly not!" she said. "What do you take me for?" "We have already determined that," said Shaw. "Now we are negotiating the price."
The universities that have abdicated their responsibility regarding "free speech" on campus have done so at a price. The only question is what further responsibilities they will give up when other rewards are offered.
I
38
@Michael Walker
Thank you. That was the best quote I've read all week.
3
@Cass it's only Monday...
@Michael Walker - Well, at least they get the million pounds!
An interesting take on this issue and one with which I largely agree. As a professor, I have long felt that encouraging and incorporating (when possible) student feedback on administrative and curricular issues is a double-edged sword. While it can be an important part of their education and bring fresh ideas to a college or university, at the same time most students do not have the perspective to see the long-term consequences of some of their choices.
64
I agree with the points made in this op-ed. Administrators, and this very much applies to faculty too, are in a bind when it comes to the illiberal behavior of students (a small but loud percentage of the student population).
41
Are these the same forces of “free inquiry” that outlawed any funding for gathering information about or research into causes and effects of gun violence?
133
@Christine Juliard
That’s a good point. Politically motivated restrictions on speech from the left or from the right can usually be opposed for the same reason. Free inquiry is usually the best policy and should be the default position, particularly at a university.
I think I read recently that the author of that policy on gun violence research, a former Congressman, regrets his action and now speaks against what he did.
11
@Christine Juliard
Everyone has a right to free speech. No one has a right to government funding.
In fact, funding for gun violence research wasn't outlawed. Congress just voted not to fund it. That is Congress's constitutional power. Whether it was a prudent decision in the public interest is another question.
8
@Jonathan Katz
Well, explicitly preventing research funds from being used to investigate guns as a public health problem is kind of outlawing the research, no?
16
This is a helpful exposition of subtleties many will find difficult to understand. "Liberal" ought to mean "willing to let all viewpoints be expounded freely." That does not mean one has to listen to them necessarily, and certainly not that one approves of all of them. But to attempt to censor them, whether students or administrators be the would-be censors, is "illiberal" by definition.
92
I've always defined liberalism as the acceptance that different experiences will lead people to different points of view, and that as many reasonable/rational points of view should be considered as possible and balanced against the needs of the population.
The shout down culture is by this definition not liberal.
212
Even if you agree with the substance of the order, I find it rather egregious to use the Federal Governments funding as a cudgel to beat Universities into line. I fear that this tactic will continue to be used, and abused, in the future.
55
@Mark F. Gee, Mark, the government uses the funding and power cudgel in lots of ways, such as in attacking private colleges, in what health insurance companies must provide their employees, or as I just read in what branches can be trimmed off a tree in California. It's interesting that "diversity" to the left means establishing quotas for race and sexuality, but has nothing on how or what we think, which I would have thought is what "diversity" really means.
20
@DJohn
The problem with the word diversity is not the word itself but the various definitions that people apply to it. My great aunt used to tell me: “say what you mean and mean what you say otherwise you leave your intentions open to interpretation by others. Personally I think we as a people need to spell out diversity when we use the word: Racial diversity, sexual diversity, thought diversity, etc.
For example: when a speaker comes to a college campus and specifically or indirectly says “‘whites’ are the better of all races and let me tell you why...” and they are not open to truly hearing the opinions of others on the topic or have a healthy debate about race then it can fall under lack of diversity and then be classified as hate speech.
To not be clear with what we mean and what we want as a society is to only create an opening for divisive thinking.
1
@C. Howley: [ ...when a speaker comes to a college campus and specifically or indirectly says ....]
It is not the responsibility of the speaker to debate the issue with the audience as there is often little time for that.
If students want to hear an opposing view, they can invite a different speaker.
Or, they can organize a debate.
I agree with the writer that this will become a net positive for campus conservatives. Too many conservative speakers have been discouraged from coming on campus.
As for the student at Yale shouting down the professor - she have faced some kind of disciplinary action, i.e. Suspension perhaps. A professor should be protected and complimented by the administration and his peers. Politically correct students are now running amok on our nation's campuses and only a few places like Chicago take a firm stand against them.
126
@Joe
The Yale student who verbally attacked Professor Christakis was not disciplined; she was awarded the Nakanishi Prize, in recognition of "exemplary leadership in enhancing race and/or ethnic relations at Yale College."
33
Why should a student be disciplined for speaking up on behalf of what he/she believes. Is that not free speech?
5
@Joe
The worst part is that these universities have their prestige because of the accomplishments of these scholars. They are a lot harder to find that whiny undergraduates, after all. When I think of the University of Chicago, the first name that comes to mind is Enrico Fermi--not a social justice warrior student.
4