Sure they should. They’re not the same thing, but they both represent an institution’s commitment to diversity of viewpoints and freedom of speech.
Exactly. The fact that they have an even-handed policy for campus groups, which allows the Young Bigots the same freedom as the SETGWATA when it comes to inviting campus speakers, is clear evidence of the institution’s recognition of the importance of diversity of viewpoints and freedom of speech, no matter what “virulently anti-conservative” views individual members of the institution may hold.
And if it was just this, and if free speech were respected in other aspects of the university, then maybe you’d have a point here, although I’d label the university naive and negligent at the very least for failing to anticipate, prevent or at least punish offenders who do this after the fact.
But it’s not. Too many other examples of suppressing free speech exist to be able to give universities the benefit of the doubt. I have already mentioned Larry Summers, but this is hardly the only example:
-Ridiculous speech codes that do more to foster an air of intimidation than ensure people act civilly toward each other (Think that sexual harrassment doesn’t occur among college students? Think again!)
-Removal of campus newspapers and other literature carrying conservative viewpoints by students. Institution’s response: Zero (I can personally vouch for this, having seen it done at my first job as a librarian, and I can assure you that as a librarian, it was a wake-up call!).
-Antireligious bias, including the suspension or refusal to fund both Christian and Muslim groups (I haven’t actually come across this personally, but I have talked to the religious groups on campus, and they are constantly under fire. FTR, I’m an atheist.)
Kimstu, when it comes to freedom of speech, and the open recognition of ideas, the universities have been guilty of crimes of both commission and omission. Now maybe you just happened to luck out at great institutions, but campus suppression of free speech is not exactly subtle at other places, even to my dim intellect. I’m not saying it’s all the work of frothy ex 60’s radicals, but it needs to be stopped, however it started, and if it takes a conservative movement like FIRE to get the ball rolling, then I’m all for it. Perhaps it’s time for real liberals who enjoy real free speech on campus to remember what made them great.
Indeed. Liberal students shouting speakers off the stage isn’t as repellent as the recent rash of conservative students hanging nooses on the doors of black faculty members, but it’s still repellent, and it definitely happens. Colleges need to deal with it vigorously, IMO.
So far as I’m aware, the perpetrators of that noose incident at Columbia haven’t been caught yet. There have been hate crime hoaxes before, so perhaps we ought to wait before we assume the person(s) responsible were white and conservative.
Well, shit, if you’re going to bring up Dutch politicians not even speaking at university and people from the 60’s, why stop with the pies. Fortuyn was shot dead in the street! Aha! And Bremer shot Wallace! Aha!
Didn’t take you long to forget all about the Duke University rape hoax scandal, did it? Otherwise, I don’t think you’d be quite so flippant about all this.
I’m talking about the way you tried to sneer away the problem of rampant political correctness in our universities with the flippant tone of your previous post, and I cited the recent hate campaign against three white male students at Duke University falsely accused of raping a black woman as a glaring example of political correctness running amok. That’s what I’m talking about. If you meant something else, then perhaps you should be a little more direct and a little less coy in your posts.
Oh, is that what I did? I could have sworn I wrote a flippant post about U of D getting rid of that hateful diversity program you keep going on about.
Boy, I didn’t know that my my two sentences conjured up white guys getting shit for a fake rape at a completely different University that has absofuckinglutly nothing to do with what I wrote. Thanks for pointing that out, Lonesome.
Especially now that the University of Delaware realized that there were real problems with this program and scrapped the whole thing? There will be no further activities under it, and they’re going to redo the whole thing from scratch.
I find it interesting that now they are saying that program goals aren’t being met, where a few days ago criticism of the program seems to have been met with responses that everything was just fine with it. But anyway, it’s dead, and something else will replace it.
I hope whatever that is is more respectful of the academic freedoms of the students it teaches, and I’m glad this particular program, which didn’t seem so respectful of these, is gone. Kudos to the U of D for correcting a mistake.
Sigh . . . You know the problem with debating stuff like academic freedom is? So many of the people on your side are either assholes or totally off their nut.