Free speech is expensive in college
Kaylee McGhee White
Free speech is becoming a luxury on college campuses that few can afford.
Most of America’s elite universities are plagued by vicious intolerance, enforced by the student body and administration alike. Of course, this intolerance only ever runs in one direction. If you lean to the left or are at least willing to pretend that you do, you have nothing to fear. But if you dare to mention conservatism or any of its supposedly bigoted values, good luck.
Perhaps that’s why self-censorship is now par for the course. Faculty members who are concerned with the ideological trends on campus, and students who just don’t want to draw attention to themselves, would rather say nothing at all than risk the wrath of the mob. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, 40% of faculty members say they self-censor now more than they did before 2020, and 41% of students are not confident the school would protect opposing views.
At Yale Law School, administrators have stopped bothering with free speech altogether. Last year, students shouted down a conservative attorney who had been invited to discuss litigation before the Supreme Court. Last week, when the same attorney was invited back to campus for another event, the school made sure no one but those with Yale Law IDs would be allowed to attend. We wouldn’t want “controversial” ideas to gain traction, now, would we?
Sadly, these are the schools that are churning out the leaders of tomorrow. What happens in the classroom will not stay there. Our future lawyers, corporate board members, scientists, and more are being trained to accept leftist orthodoxy unquestionably and attack anyone who doesn’t. Their inability to wrestle with and debate ideas that differ from their own will have a profound effect on our culture.
Indeed, it already is. Last week, for example, a Fox News contributor was asked to leave a Miami restaurant after the owner of the joint overheard him engaged in a political discussion with some friends. Apparently, expressing his conservative beliefs in a private dinner conversation was an unforgivable offense.
Similarly, late last year, a Christian organization found that its reservation had been canceled last minute by a Virginia restaurant simply because it was a Christian organization. We used to have a term for this kind of behavior: bigotry.
Unfortunately, the old bigotry is the new social justice. Just ask the college students.