FREE SPEECH AND OUR COLLEGES – AT 11:54 A.M. ET:  One of the great issues of our time is the erosion of free speech in our colleges and universities.  Under the false notion of making schools more "welcoming," especially to "oppressed" students, administrators have narrowed the definition of acceptable speech, making some campuses hostages to the thought police.  The problems extend even to our most prestigious universities, like Yale.  From Heatstreet: 

A federal judge is chastising Yale University for caving to the demands of hypersensitive students, and he is warning that the elite school is developing a habit of trampling on First Amendment protections.

Writing for the Yale Law & Public Public Review (via CampusReform), US Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes (who was previously Yale’s general counsel) referred to Encounter Books’ recent decision to republish copies of the Woodward Report, a Yale document affirming its commitment to freedom of expression. In 1975, the university adopted the report as official school policy.

Cabranes says that their decision to reprint the report was a response to the institution’s fading commitment to its contents. Last year, Yale students petitioned to abolish its course on “Major English Poets,” which has existed since 1920, because they found it “hostile to students of color.” In the days prior, two professors resigned amid a scandal revolving around the “cultural appropriation” of offensive Halloween costumes.

Yale students also protested Milo Yiannopoulos, whose speaking engagement was canceled over last-minute venue changes, exorbitant security fees and a variety of other restrictions that the Conservative firebrand deemed “absurd.”

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's well worth it.  One of the things President Trump must do is to bring the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education – known as the Title IX Office – under control.  That office has issued regulations that often deprive students of basic rights and due process, in order to satisfy one group or another.  Students live in fear that if they say the wrong thing, or look at someone the wrong way, they can be hauled before a student court. 

One of the great lies is that intellectuals love freedom.  In fact, the history is decidedly mixed.  Too often intellectuals see themselves as superior to others, and therefore entitled to violate another's rights to achieve a "higher" objective.  I would place human freedom in the hands of educators.

January 31, 2017