See Thru Edu is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D., Editor in Chief and Director, Center for Higher Education, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Multiple incidents have threatened free speech—and student safety—on California’s college campuses this year, so taxpayers and lawmakers should welcome the proposal from Assemblywoman Melissa A. Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) to protect students and the free expression of ideas.
Has a Newtonian reaction begun – a pushback by students who understand the value of hearing and appropriating a variety of viewpoints?
Do you think that you can count on university leaders to uphold the First Amendment on their campuses? If so, think again.
A handful of academics at a handful of universities have signed statements on behalf of allowing “diverse” views to be heard at the university. These statements are worthless.
We live in a moment when mass hysterias override and drive away the reasonableness our civilization once took as a cornerstone of the good life, the life of ordered liberty. Campus disorders merely reflect the mental and moral disorders of the time.
“The domination of elite institutions of higher education by the upper middle class is a big problem for social mobility. . . . It looks like it might be bad news for free speech, too.”
The irony here is rich. In trying to spread knowledge about our constitutional rights—including free speech—a student at a public college was informed that those rights were only exercisable in a 616-square-foot area.
College students should be able to trust that school officials protect students’ physical safety on campus. Yet some at postsecondary institutions equate protecting students’ physical welfare with stifling free expression.
No one should endorse or accept racist or hate speech, even if protected by the First Amendment. But these days the undefined terms “racist” and “hate speech” are being tossed around loosely against ideas that critics just don’t like.
Credit the New York Times with digging a little ways beneath the toxic surface of the Middlebury College disorders to find out what students there are presently thinking about the protest that injured a professor and closed down the sociologist Charles Murray’s intended lecture.
