One of the most dangerous trends in America today is occurring on college campuses. These are the places I grew up viewing as laboratories for free speech, youthful energy and resistance to the status quo.
Unfortunately, what they’re turning into are anti-intellectual wastelands in which America’s supposedly “best and brightest” are being transformed into unthinking, mentally shackled, emotionally stunted automatons. The only thing being produced on college campuses these days seem to be frightened, thoughtless worker-bees, conditioned to shut-up and instinctively worship authority. Rather than teaching kids to think critically, administrators have created an environment where kids aren’t encouraged to think at all.
For those of you who may have missed it, I’ve covered this topic before. See:
Rutgers University Warns Students – “There is No Such Thing as Free Speech”
A Professor Speaks Out – How Coddled, Hyper Sensitive Undergrads are Ruining College Learning
Moving along, today’s piece relates to a recent incident on the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. A fraternity-sorority party was held under the theme “Kanye Western,” in which partygoers wore costumes parodying Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian. Naturally, this was simply too much to handle for a vocal group of censorship-inclined students. As such, the accusations began to fly that the greek students wore blackface, and school administrators immediately moved to suspend the social activities of the fraternity and sorority before completing an investigation.
Interestingly enough, in the days that followed, it became clear that the students weren’t actually wearing blackface at all (not that it would have mattered from a free speech perspective). Conor Friedersdorf did an incredible job for making the case for free speech in his excellent Atlantic article. Here are a few excerpts:
A half-century ago, student activists at the University of California clashed with administrators during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, a series of events that would greatly expand free-speech rights of people at public colleges and universities.
Today, activists at UCLA are demanding that administrators punish some of their fellow students for expressive behavior that is clearly protected by the First Amendment.
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