College campuses are known to be bastions of leftist “thought”. The main backers of this ideology tend not to be students, but professors and faculty themselves.
Even on campuses with fairly moderate or conservative student bodies, leftist professors routinely feel the need to publicly virtue signal to their equally far-left colleagues.
There may be no better example of this than a recent letter signed by 25 professors at Washington State University that calls for the university to institute policies to combat that dangerous menace known as, in their words, “free speech”.
The tear-stained letter begins: “We have witnessed an increase of exclusionary language based on race, citizenship status and religious affiliation in recent months; here on campus, with the erection of a wall and several other incidents on/off campus and in social media.”
Is that so? If we’re truly living in such an awful, racist world, where is the documentation of these incidents? Surely, these professors would not be lying about fictitious incidents of hate – not even real hate crimes – to fit their political agenda.
The only truly racist incident that has taken place on campus was a Hispanic Trump supporter being told by a group of Hispanic students that he is a “race traitor” for his political beliefs.
Suspiciously, this actual instance of racism managed to escape the coverage in the campus’ apotheosis of unbiased journalism, The Daily Evergreen. At least they managed to crack the case when they got trolled by the notorious Sam Hyde.
Next, the ensemble of truly brilliant English and gender studies professors come out of the closet and admit their goal: they’re not interested in winning the battle of ideas, they’re just interested in kicking conservatives off campus.
“It is not enough [to] encourage ‘open-mindedness’ and ‘sensitivity’ especially when these passive efforts and rhetoric invariably lead to a culture that accepts and tolerates bigotry and harassment,” the sob story reads.
“A campus culture that hides behind ‘tolerance’ and discourses of free speech undeviatingly creates a campus that is especially disempowering to marginalized students.”
That’s right: we need to censor those right-wingers, they may hurt someone’s feelings.
Here’s the thing about free speech, special snowflakes: it works both ways. The right that gives a right-wing student group the freedom to demonstrate in favor of stricter immigration policy gives you the right to write your pathetic, whiny letters about the “racism” that you have to make up so you have something to talk about in your comparative ethnic studies classes.
It hasn’t even been fifty years and the Left has already forgotten the Kent State massacre, where anti-war protesters were shot exercising their right to free speech.
Presumably, to these professors promoting fascistic speech control from their ivory towers, Kent State-level enforcement would be preferable to a group of white males with undercuts and Trump shirts hurting someone’s feelings.
How do these crybaby academics propose we fix the problem? If you guessed “more regulation,” you win.
“We must work to create mechanisms and structures that combat hate,” the professors propose.
Certainly, these “mechanisms” wouldn’t be used to censor political speech that the left found disagreeable or, even worse, “problematic.”
These mechanisms and structures would be used to “empower all constituencies to be active in our collective efforts to rid the campus of bigotry and systemic inequality.”
All constituencies except for anyone with an ideology to the right of Karl Marx.
If they are so concerned with systemic inequality, why are they not concerned with the inequality in ideology present among campus faculty? What percentage of professors voted for Donald Trump? It seems like a system so stacked in one direction could have problems teaching students of all intellectual backgrounds.
Plus, black and Hispanic students receive comparatively more need-based financial aid than white students. Is that a “systemic inequality”? If so, I’m all in to help fix it – just tell me how to go about cutting scholarships and sending that money to white and Asian students.
The problem with this isn’t that 25 butthurt professors wanted to go on a slacktivist campaign for social justice. Campaigns like this underscore the left’s playbook for censoring their political opponents: ban hate speech to protect feelings, label any right-wing speech as “hate speech,” and enjoy a lifetime without intellectual challenge.
In truth, the only real “hate” being espoused is coming from left-wing students and professors in the wake of Trump’s victory. Threats against Donald Trump, his family, and his advisers can be seen online on a regular basis. White students have been threatened and attacked across the country, but these professors (in their infinite wisdom) are right: the real problem is that a trans-black amputee womyn of color with autism may have zir’s feelings hurt.
The letter, which is apparently being sent to embattled university president Kirk Schultz, will ultimately result in no policy changes. If it did, those policies would be unconstitutional to the point of being unenforceable.
Attacks on free speech will only increase as the left realizes their hold on academia is slipping away. With conservative student organizations dominating their left-wing counterparts in terms of membership and energy, there is a growing paranoia among leftist professors that their indoctrination isn’t working the way they thought it would.
That being said, this white male with an undercut can’t wait to graduate.
Great article and written excellently..Really enjoyable..