Apropos of a comment from today’s George Will column comes the following from the CSM: Harvard flap prompts query: How free is campus speech?
Dr. Summers’s comments - which he said were intended to provoke discussion about why women were underrepresented in top science posts - have ended up raising an even larger question: Have universities become so steeped in sensitivities that certain topics can’t be openly discussed?Historically, ivory towers have been society’s bulwarks of free intellectual exploration. But critics say that role is jeopardized on issues ranging from gender and race to religion and the politics of the Middle East.
“I could give example after example where speech that is considered offensive by any particular group that has a disproportionate amount of power on the campus is subject to censorship and repression,” says David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties organization that works on college campuses. “It gives the most sensitive person the veto power on debate and discussion.”
Many disagree with that assessment. But the Summers flap has revived a longstanding debate on the subject - often waged along ideological lines over whether campuses are hostile to those with conservative ideas.
The whole piece is worth a read.
I do think that there is something to this, insofar as many universities, especially the more elite ones, tend to be bastions of political correctess and hypersensitivity. As such, the free flow of ideas is often staunched in places where people shouldn’t be afraid of ideas, which is a shame and a waste.
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I agree with you, it is a shame that universities have to sacrifice the freedom of ideas in the spirit of political correctness.
Comment by Bamacrat — Thursday, January 27, 2024 @ 9:51 pm
Lest we be too quick to jump on the bandwagon re: PC speech, I could point to an equal number of instances on small, private religious college campuses where the same thing happens to the other extreme. The most sensitive, conservative elements on campus have the veto power over discussion. Recall the flap at Baylor University last year over the publication of an editorial in the student newspaper in support of homosexual marriage (although the editorial was pretty tame by most standards).
I find it interesting that we have this whole Summers flap and the debate over free speech at Harvard, which - last I checked - was still a private university, not overly religious, but still private.
Comment by bryan — Thursday, January 27, 2024 @ 10:15 pm
I would decry the Baylor event as well.
And I don’t think public/private is really the issue: the issue is whether in the context of learning and knowledge that ideas should be so easily stiffled.
Comment by Steven Taylor — Friday, January 28, 2024 @ 7:09 am
I know you would Steven. the point is that people on the right tend to think this is just a liberal thing - as Will hints at. But it goes on in both directions.
Comment by bryan — Friday, January 28, 2024 @ 7:20 am