Education: March 2019 Archives
Campus Intolerance of Free Speech Roots Revealed in Recent Study | National Review
"At first, I objected to the question. We are not 'forced to choose' between inclusivity and free speech. But on reflection, I realized the question's worth. That's exactly how free-speech debates are framed on campus. Advocates of free speech are often cast as enemies of diversity and opponents of inclusion. Students are told time and again that if they value historically marginalized communities, then they should endeavor to protect them from problematic or offensive speech.
"Yet that line of thinking posits a false conflict. No one is more empowered by free speech than the historically marginalized and dispossessed. Writing in 1860, Frederick Douglass rightly declared free speech to be the 'great moral renovator of society and government.' He argued that 'slavery cannot tolerate free speech' and that 'five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South.'
"Federal court rulings defeating state efforts to suppress the civil-rights movement were indispensable to the cause of equality. I remember asking the Reverend Walter Fauntroy, an early member of the Congressional Black Caucus, why he believed the movement for African-American equality made such rapid legal gains once it was able to fully mobilize.
'Almighty God and the First Amendment,' he responded. The First Amendment gave the most visible marginalized group in American history a voice, and God softened men's hearts to hear the message that spread as a result."
A few noisy students at the dorm Sullivan oversees have protested his involvement in the case, and the Harvard administration has focused on placating them rather than backing the faculty member and the legal traditions of presumption of innocence and the right to counsel.
"[Q.] Is this on the dean of Harvard College, who launched this survey, or is this in response to student pressure? Do you blame the administration, or do you think that the students forced his hand?"
"No, students have every right to protest. It's in the nature of students to protest. The adults in the room, however, do not have to react in the way that they have."
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"[Q.]" There's been a lot written about political correctness running amok on campus the last few years. Do you consider this an example of it? Has this incident changed the way you think about that larger issue?"
"To the first part of your question, the term political correctness has so much freight that I'm going to choose my own term and say that this situation is a particular instantiation of a larger threat to both academic freedom and the norm of open and robust exchanges of ideas that have typically characterized universities. It has not changed my thinking, because I have long been concerned with forms of silencing that go on in the university space with respect to people who have different ideas. I have gotten scores of notes from students who very quietly give strong support to me, and I appreciate those notes. But one constant is that they say that they feel as though they cannot say anything publicly because they will be tarred and feathered as 'rape sympathizers' and that they're disinclined to step out publicly. This sort of thing has no space in the university. People have to be able to exchange ideas, even ideas with which they disagree, freely and openly. That's that."
Colorado Springs wrestler refuses to wrestle girl, knocks self out of tournament
High school wrestler Brendan Johnston, a modern-day Eric Liddell.
'"I'm not really comfortable with a couple of things with wrestling a girl," Johnston explained. "The physical contact, there's a lot of it in wrestling.
'"And I guess the physical aggression, too. I don't want to treat a young lady like that on the mat. Or off the mat. And not to disrespect the heart or the effort that she's put in. That's not what I want to do, either."
'Johnston is forever a part of Colorado state tournament lore now. He's cool with that. His decision to forfeit twice at the 2019 state tourney -- effectively eliminating himself from a competition he had a solid shot at winning -- on personal and religious grounds rather than wrestle two girl competitors, may divide your inner circle right down the middle. He's cool with that, too.
'"Wrestling is something we do, it's not who we are," Johnston told The Denver Post before forfeiting to Rios on Saturday in his final match as a high-school wrestler. "And there are more important things to me than my wrestling. And I'm willing to have those priorities."'
