The real issue in the campus speech debate: The university is under assault

• Published in: Washington Post – Blogs
• Main Author: Dirks, Nicholas B
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post 09.08.2017
• Subjects: College campuses; Conservatism; Coulter, Ann; Debates; Demonstrations & protests; Liberalism; Politics; Students; Violence

The initial image was indelible: an out-of-control bonfire on the central plaza, protesters using black bloc tactics storming the student union, a campus police force overwhelmed by unprecedented violence – which declared under duress that it could no longer control the event and had to cancel the appearance of the self-proclaimed troll and provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos. [...]it was repeated recently when the Berkeley College Republicans complained that their invitation of Ben Shapiro was being blocked, when in fact the administration was actively working with the student group to identify appropriate accommodations in an effort to ensure that the event could go forward without disruption. The headlines took hold not just because of Berkeley's historical – and now iconic — relationship to free speech, but because they played into the narrative that college campuses in recent years have morphed into cocoons of political correctness that, in their effort to provide safe environments in which students can live and learn, have shifted from policing protesters to policing speech. Faculty and student concern also reflected the fact that for years, important intellectual currents on college campuses have taken aim at core liberal values on the grounds that they have consistently masked the real power relations that make the speech of the marginalized and oppressed seem far from free. Examples: State legislatures are to be given the authority to monitor free speech on campuses, demanding yearly reports, insisting (and thus defining) administrative neutrality on all political issues, imposing new rules for student discipline (including expulsion) around any perceived disruption of free speech (again, defining what disruption might mean, as opposed to the exercise of their own free speech rights), and ultimately taking direct responsibility for controlling campus unrest.