Free and Open Inquiry
Academia, once so fiercely supportive of free speech and against any form of censorship, is now beginning to question its value. Some, in fact, are proposing to put explicit limits on it. -Danielle C. Struppa
Sixty-six percent of college students think shouting down a speaker they disagree with is acceptable to shut down their talk, and another 23 percent believe violence can be used to cancel a speech, according to a wide-scale survey...
Another key finding is that nearly one in four students say it’s acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech — up 5 percent over last year’s survey — with some elite colleges bringing that figure to as high as one in three students accepting of such violence.
-Katelynn Richardson 
As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.
-Thomas Sowell
Sensitivities seemed to reach a peak at Emory when students complained of being traumatized after finding “TRUMP 2016” chalked on sidewalks around campus.
The Trump-averse protesters chanted, “Come speak to us, we are in pain!,” until Emory’s president wrote a letter promising to “honor the concerns of these students.”
Such reports flummoxed many people who had always thought of themselves as devout liberals. Wasn’t free self-expression the whole point of social progressivism?
Wasn’t liberal academe a way for ideas, good and bad, to be subjected to enlightened reason?
-Nathan Heller
Congratulations Yale, and Missouri, and American academia in general, you’ve succeeded in undermining the ethic of free inquiry, disinterested scholarship, and certainly anything like decent manners. -Mona Charen
Instead, a sizable group of students, supported by some faculty, declared that the time for debate was over, and that those who disagreed with them had to be fired. Those students, and those faculty, had become so self-absorbed to demand the intellectual obliteration of any dissent, and those who don’t embrace the new orthodoxy are redefined as enemies. -Danielle C. Struppa
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Warming, Liberal, Science, Academia
Three professors co-teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently told their students via email that man-made climate change is not open for debate, and those who think otherwise have no place in their course.
“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email...
Hypocrisy, Liberal, Narrative, Academia, Feminism
A student at Reed College has been banned from class for denying the existence of “rape culture” in the United States and arguing that the oft-repeated statistic that one in five women are raped at college is bogus. Jeremiah True, 19, received an email from professor Pancho Savery on March 14 telling him he was making his classmates so uncomfortable that he was
Liberal, Character, Abortion, Tolerance, Diversity
A female student was threatened by feminist and LGBT organizations at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington after she invited them to attend a pro-life event... "We do not need, nor want, these invitations. If you continue to attempt to contact any of us, we will take further action.”... UNCW’s College Democrats also declined the invitation to attend the event as “our party’s views do not align with the views of the speaker.”
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Character, Fascism, Academia
A Hillary Clinton donor who serves as dean of the University of Arkansas libraries has banned the Washington Free Beacon from the school’s special collections archives, after the news outlet published revealing stories about Hillary Clinton based on documents available at the university library.
The ban came days after the Free Beacon ran a story about Clinton’s 1975 defense of a child rapist that drew from audio recordings available at the University of Arkansas library’s special collections archives.
Pass our ideological purity test, or shut up...
The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices.
Understanding this argument requires an ability to detect and follow nuance, but nuance has largely been dismissed from the debates about speech raging on college campuses. Absolutist postures and the binary reign supreme. You are pro- or anti-, radical or fascist, angel or demon. Even small differences of opinion are seized on and characterized as moral and intellectual failures, unacceptable thought crimes that cancel out anything else you might say.
No one should have to pass someone else's ideological purity test to be allowed to speak.
People Are Less Interested In Discussion Than Domination...
I do think that there's an atmosphere at Yale Law School where people are constantly under threat of denunciation by more progressive student activist types for one reason or another...
I think that the culture of public shaming and demanding apologies is unhealthy and encourages people's worst tendencies.
People are less interested in discussion than domination, which is worrisome, considering the importance of this institution.
What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent.
Extremists on the left are going after science. Why? Because science seeks truth, and truth isn’t always convenient.
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, ‘brethren!’ Be careful, teachers!
“I have great respect and affection for my students, but I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems.” -Erika Christakis
Hypocrisy, Liberal, Character, Fascism, Academia, Censorship
Portland State University students hold an annual forum with the theme "Law and Disorder" at which they critique police conduct. Speakers tend to be people from the left who have a history of speaking out against police brutality. This year, the forum couldn't get started because one of the speakers -- who has published numerous books and articles about the subject -- was shouted down by audience members who objected to some of his recent writing about sexual violence.
"Conservatives my age tend to be far more willing to engage in those conversations than liberals, the worst of [whom] enter any conversation with the delusional notion that their worldview is undeniably superior, and absolutely the ideal moral paradigm."
During my talk a kindly philosophy professor stood up & urged students to be civil. He was jeered, mocked & crowd angrily yelled "Sit down."
— Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) April 21, 2015Liberal, Fascism, Academia
“Today, on many campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species” -Michael Bloomberg
College: an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 10, 2014
The revolution on college campuses, which seeks to eradicate individuals and ideas that are considered unsavory, constitutes a hostile takeover by fringe elements on the extreme left.
Last spring at the Evergreen State College, where I was a professor for 15 years, the revolution was televised—proudly and intentionally—by the radicals.
Opinions not fitting with the currently accepted dogma—that all white people are racist, that questioning policy changes aimed at achieving “equity” is itself an act of white supremacy—would not be tolerated, and those who disagreed were shouted down, hunted, assaulted, even battered.
-Heather Heying
Academic freedom in the UK will wither and die thanks to a generation of lecturers too scared to challenge the status quo, a major new book claims today. Universities are trapped “worshipping at the altar of progressive opinion”, and individual scholars self-censor to avoid the wrath of their peers, according to the publication by Civitas, an independent think tank. -Kieran Corcoran