David Harsanyi of the Federalist probes an important element of the campus free-speech debate.
Should universities punish students who chant genocidal slogans aimed at Jews or sign petitions blaming women and children for their own murders? It’s a worthwhile debate about open discourse. But don’t let it obscure a more relevant fact: There is no free speech on campus.
Not really. Not in any way that matters. And certainly not for those who would dissent against the quackery of identitarianism, intersectionality, and “anti-colonialism” — and a host of other pseudointellectual “-isms” that currently infect education.
If American campuses actually housed robust, open discourse, these “elite” schools wouldn’t be churning out so many moral imbeciles and credentialed ignoramuses who detest the country and civilization that makes “protest” possible. The near uniformity in outlook speaks to the fact that dumb ideas go unchallenged in these hermetically sealed institutions.
It also goes without saying that if Harvard students were signing statements blaming black Americans for the existence of white supremacy or calling for an international Intifada against gay populations, we would already be awash in an overwrought national conversation about the limits of free expression.
Everyone knows, of course, that no such thing would ever happen in the first place. Defending free expression when one side can monopolize debate is worse than an empty gesture.
But even nominally controversial right-of-center ideas barely have a place in these schools. Academic freedom is a myth. Elite schools don’t explicitly prohibit dissenting views. They have merely expelled, neutralized, grandfathered out, and replaced those ideas. Outside of STEM programs and perhaps a few other fields, academia is now dominated by extremists and quacks.
Years ago, I can recall Colorado University making a big show of searching for a professor of “conservative thought” — or some such thing — by which it meant they were looking for a person to teach a set of ideas that would, in any healthy university setting, already be embedded in an array of disciplines.
