“When fascism comes to America,” I am repeatedly warned by bumper stickers on Priuses and Mini Coopers, “it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” While this message is hyperbolic, no doubt many people fear the influence of certain right-wing ideologues in America. When these activists pushed for school prayer or supported amendments prohibiting burning the American flag, liberals consistently opposed these measures on the grounds that they would curtail First Amendment rights. Now, however, these same rights are under assault from the left, primarily from our fellow college students and their enablers. Allegedly liberal students are demonstrating worryingly illiberal tendencies at colleges across the nation, insisting professors retire for holding unpopular opinions and demanding administrators condemn flyers promoting the value of freedom of speech. This is a distressing trend, and on principle our University should follow the lead of schools like Purdue and issue a preemptive response.
Earlier this year, the University of Chicago convened a committee on freedom of expression to reaffirm the school’s commitment to this sacred American ideal. The committee crafted a statement declaring that the proper way to cope with ideas one finds repugnant is not with censorship, but “by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.” Princeton University, American University and Purdue University soon followed suit, and our University ought to do the same. Such action is hardly unwarranted. In the last two weeks alone, we’ve witnessed shocking disregard by both students and faculty across the country for rights we consider fundamental to a pluralistic society.
At the University of Missouri students organized a protest on public grounds, then demanded that media figures stay away. When one enterprising student journalist sought to photograph the event, a professor of communications attempted to forcibly remove him from the premises, shouting, “I need some muscle over here… Get this reporter out of here.” Responding to this event the next day, the vice president of the Missouri Students Association told MSNBC host Thomas Roberts that she is “tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here." Evidently the learning environment is not only hostile, it is also free of civics classes.
Such speech-suppressing thinking is not contained to Missouri. Last week, my fellow columnist Hasan Khan penned a thoughtful op-ed on the dangers of “safe spaces,” detailing recent events at Yale and suggesting that demands for safe spaces are becoming “weapons to attack anyone with opposing views” which “pose a different type of intolerance that imperil First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.” Khan succinctly shows how these Yalies seek to bully their dissenters into silence, and there are more troubling trends nationwide. At Amherst, a group calling themselves Amherst Uprising is demanding their university president issue a statement saying he does “not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the ‘All Lives Matter’ posters, and the ‘Free Speech’ posters.” Moreover, once found, these thought criminals must undergo a disciplinary process as well as “extensive training for racial and cultural competency.” The irony of claiming to stand for tolerance for all while simultaneously demonstrating extreme intolerance toward any dissenting opinions seems to be lost on the leadership of this organization, but I suppose this is unsurprising. A recent study found that over 50 percent of college students favor speech codes, and 30 percent of self-identified liberals believe the First Amendment is outdated. We may need to update that bumper sticker.
Obviously, none of this is particularly shocking to those watching or reading the news lately. Editorials, columns, blogs and nearly all imaginable forms of communication have inundated the news media in recent months lamenting the growing intolerance of certain student activists, often pejoratively referred to as “Social Justice Warriors.” Jonathan Chait has been especially articulate in calling out his fellow leftists, warning nearly a year ago that contemporary political correctness is perverting liberalism; after the recent events at Yale and Missouri he has continued urging us to take political correctness seriously. Chait is merely one of many writing on the subject of speech codes on campuses; indeed, these think pieces are so ubiquitous now I questioned whether I ought to even bother adding my voice to the herd. But this topic is likely to only grow more salient in the coming months, and our University should launch an affirmative defense against the thought police before they reach our gates.
Adopting the aforementioned Chicago statement would be a start, but Purdue President Mitch Daniels demonstrates how to go a step further. In the wake of these recent protests on campuses nationwide, Daniels began his email in quintessential university president fashion: “First, we strive to be, without exception, a welcoming, inclusive, discrimination-free community where each person is treated with dignity.” But Daniels added an important addendum: Purdue shall remain “steadfast in preserving academic freedom and individual liberty… What a proud contrast to the environments that appear to prevail at places like Missouri and Yale.” In his concise statement, Daniels reminds us that the requests of protesters for a more inclusive environment and the demands of liberal democracy for freedom of expression are not necessarily mutually exclusive. University President Teresa Sullivan has a penchant for sending out long-winded emails that few actually read and that say nothing new. Perhaps she should follow President Daniels’ lead and write a short one.
Matt Winesett is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at m.winesett@cavalierdaily.com.
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