Progressivism is Killing Free Speech on Campus

Aug 7, 2017
3 min read

In 1964, students at the University of California Berkeley famously protested the right to Free Speech on campus. Today, they protest the right to be free of it.

Free speech is under attack on college campuses across the nation, and it is worse than you thought.

Progressive ideologues in both the university administration and student body have turned the college campus into a modern day "Oceania", where independent thinking and individualism are deemed crimes. This Orwellian dystopia was brought into fruition at Evergreen College, where students held the administration hostage for not firing Professor Bret Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein made the irreconcilable mistake of challenging the university's decision to,

"ask white people to leave campus for a day of diversity programming..."

as stated by Anthony Gockowski of Campus Reform. Events like these are not exclusive to Evergreen College, as campuses around the nation have been strong-arming students and faculty into groupthink.

At the same time, under the guise of safe spaces, micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, and so called “white privilege”, etc., both students and administrators have successfully stifled speakers of opposing viewpoints through riots and protests. Speakers such as Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Ben Shapiro are just some of the many guests requiring a security detail in order to step foot on campus.

Riots at UC Berkeley during Milo Yiannopoulos's speaking event.

Faculty and administrators are not the only ones to blame for this indoctrination. Today's mainstream media has pushed the notion that opposing speech is just as harmful as physical assault, encouraging students to take violent action against speakers with whom they disagree. Lisa Barrett of the New York Times states in her op-ed "When is Speech Violence?",

"Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system. Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain - even kill neurons - and shorten your life."

Barrett proceeds to make the argument that offensive speech should be allowed, in contrast to abusive speech. The difference? Well, no one really knows. But what we do know is that characters like Milo Yiannopolous fall under the "abusive" category, and should never be allowed on campus, as per Barrett.

And as the evidence shows, this rhetoric is resonating.

A list put out by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education shows that from 2016-2017, 50 out of the 54 speakers invited to a campus have faced disinvitation by the university, due to pressure from the "left of the speaker". Groups such as Young Americans for Freedom have seen a surge in disruptions regarding their speakers. As Grant Strobl, National Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom puts it,

"Today, a whopping 46 percent of events with conservative speakers hosted by Young America’s Foundation (YAF) were disrupted. In the year before the election, this number was less than 15 percent."

Recognition of the right to free speech by the Constitution has always been set on the pretense that speech is divisive, and the Founders knew this. They also knew the importance of the First Amendment and knew it was inseparable from a free and prosperous society as stated in the Appeal to the Inhabitants of Quebec,

"The importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated into more honorable and just modes of conduction affairs."

Colleges and Universities must revert back to the bastions of intellectual diversity they once were if America is going to stay the freest nation in the world. Progress can only occur when all viewpoints are given the chance to be heard.