Writer: Free speech not being practiced in colleges
Diversity of thought continues to be decidedly unpopular at institutions of higher education. The issue here is not that colleges are denying their students the right to hear conservative speakers, because no such right exists. The issue is, students are not free to bring any speaker that they choose to their campuses because campuses are not safe places for free speech.
Student groups choosing and inviting speakers is a normal, acceptable campus protocol, and even offensive speech is protected under the First Amendment. Do colleges not have a duty to make sure that the First Amendment is protected on campus? It is important for campuses to make sure that the First Amendment is not to be overridden by threats from violent mobs.
America’s colleges and universities are becoming increasingly hostile to free speech and civil discourse. Liberty and learning suffers.
News stories from campuses nationwide recount how students and their faculty enablers routinely silence speakers and prohibit ideas that are deemed politically incorrect.
What is a shame, millennials may be rejecting conservative principles not because they have found those principles unpersuasive, but because they’ve never been exposed to a serious argument advancing them.
Universities, characterized by speech codes, safe zones, tone policing, administration-sanctioned political correctness, once priding themselves on freedom of thought have become safe spaces for conventional liberal thinking, which amounts to suppression of the freedom of speech.
The increasing intolerance and suppression of the tradition of free expression on our campuses jeopardizes the liberties of every American and fosters long-term effects on our culture. If colleges were more interested in spurring intellectual debate and discussion, commencement speakers would be a lot more ideologically diverse.
Jack Scheidell
