For several years now, many, many people, from scholars to comedians, have noted, with example after example, the growing intolerance on many college campuses by students who seem to want to cleanse schools of people, ideas and opinions they disagree with, in the name of not hurting or upsetting anyone, all of which is antithesis to education, not to mention our U.S. Constitution.
College is a time to be exposed to all manner of thought, philosophy and opinion. The idea is to learn to discern the truth of things, to learn to think for oneself, to challenge oneself and others, respectfully, and to learn how to present ideas and arguments with facts, not feelings.
The latest, scary example comes from Wesleyan University, where students last week wanted to ban the campus newspaper, The Argus, because it ran an opinion piece that questioned whether the Black Lives Matter movement is achieving anything positive. When school newspapers came under fire it used to be from the administration, but now, on a supposedly “liberal” campus, the call for censorship is coming from the students, who want the school to pulling the newspaper’s funding.
The Wesleyan students must have missed remarks President Obama made just earlier this month, which are worth repeating here:
“Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal, and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues, who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side, and that’s a problem, too. I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with — you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, ‘You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’ That’s not the way we learn either.”
Exactly.
The Wesleyan students who disagreed with one person’s opinion printed in the student newspaper would do well to consider writing an opinion piece in response, rather than trying to defund the newspaper until all who would dare to work on the paper receive “diversity training,” among other demands. What is wrong with these kids that their first inclination is to censor? Something is seriously wrong.
So it was left to Wesleyan University President Michael Roth to speak up for the press, the Associated Press reported. In a statement titled “Black lives matter and so does free speech,” he and two other administrators objected to what they described as harassment of the newspaper’s editors and said the campus should not “demand ideological conformity because people are made uncomfortable.”
And it’s not even a matter of “toughening up” or “growing a thicker skin” as many suggest, but simply accepting that everyone has their right to their opinion, even (or especially) if it doesn’t match your own, or that of the majority. How can you get into a university without knowing that? Apparently it’s time to make the First Amendment a required part of college entrance essays, for crying out loud.
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