Slashdot Mirror
How Free Speech Died On Campus
theodp writes "The WSJ catches up with FIRE's Greg Lukianoff and his crusade to expose how universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America. In Unlearning Liberty, Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes. FIRE maintains a database of such policies on its website. What they share, lifelong Democrat Lukianoff says, is a view of 'harassment' so broad and so removed from its legal definition that 'literally every student on campus is already guilty.'"
This guy is advocating racism and sexual harassment! Shall we defeat him, PC gang?
Norfolk State: "The policy broadly prohibits using any university internet technology resources "to further personal views" or "religious or political causes." It also prohibits downloading or transmitting "inappropriate messages or images," without defining "inappropriate."
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
It's all because of greed. Universities have adopted corporate tactics to become and stay "more competitive in the marketplace" and that means shielding themselves from lawsuits and making themselves more appealing to donors.
So in order to not offend ANYONE, NO ONE is allowed to say ANYTHING.
This goes right along with sports where there is no winner\ everyone gets a trophy to PC playgrounds with no jungle gyms.
I weep at what has happened to my country in the past 30 years. I think it's time to start again from scratch.
Nice ad hominem. Instead of reading the source and arguing with the points made, you drool on yourself and blabber on about Murdoch.
The fact is that free speech in America has been getting more and more curtailed. Some in a very overt manner (free speech zones). Some in a softer manner (How DARE you suggest that affirmative action is racist, you racist). But the US is not as free as it used to be. No, we are nowhere near a totalitarian state. But freedoms do not go away overnight. If we continue to let the slide continue, we'll be closer to the totalitarian state. Freedoms are hard to get back once they've been ceded.
But thanks for your idiotic response. If anything, it was a nice foil.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Most of the examples in the article have a pro-conservative leaning. So I went to their FIRE database and tried to find some cases where I knew universities tried blocking left-wing people from speaking. Not surprisingly, I didn't find at least the ones I was aware of.
I think it's good someone is defending conservatives' right to speech. I simply feel they should be open about their partisanship.
Beetle B.
Posting anonymous so I don't lose my mod points.
> Instead of reading the source and arguing with the points made ...
Everyone here, please read this. This is part of the problem. "If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Forget political parties. Forget Democrat or Republican, or WSJ vs. NYT. If speech is being curtailed, that should concern you.
Example: friend of mine works with my wife at the Social Security Administration, where the rules are so byzantine, they can mean anything you want them to this week. This friend jokes that says things like, "my, you're looking remarkably neutral and androgynous today." It's fun to watch their puzzled expressions as they try to decide whether it's a compliment, an insult, or something that merits a formal EEOC complaint.
Freedom of speech means FREEDOM OF SPEECH. As the Supreme Court of the US has ruled many times, even OFFENSIVE speech must be protected. Even speech with which you might personally disagree.
This should concern every one of you, regardless of your ideological bent.
I'm not surprised the Wall Street Journal allowed Mr. Lukianoff to mischaracterize the contents of Fordham's statement.
Read it for yourself and see if it really matches the tone of WSJ's article : http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_2601.asp
November 9, 2012
The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public nor the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus.
To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement. There are many people who can speak to the conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms. Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and needlessly provocative--more heat than light--and her message is aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.
As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.
"Disgust" was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated Fordham.
Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni, parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully, and forcefully.
The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter's (and the student organizers') opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy--and one another--stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community, and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice.
Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President
Compare and contrast with
Mr. Lukianoff says that the Fordham-Coulter affair took campus censorship to a new level:
"This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I've ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech."
I guess in the print edition, the WSJ and Lukianoff can assume most people won't actually read the statement being attacked.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Today's students can take back their freedom of expression, but will they have the guts to do so? Or will they continue to lament that "the man" doesn't allow them to say unpopular things?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Another idiot using an ad hominem attack.
FIRE was founded about 15 years ago by a civil liberties professor. So your "Republican wing" comment is pretty stupid. It promotes free speech on campus, even those that might be the most upstanding or "socially polite". If anything, they are more like the ACLU than RNC.
But yeah, dismiss things out of hand with no factual basis. Then immediately afterward, pat yourself on the back for being an intellectual.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Exactly. Just look at how offensive she is! Anything that offends me must be destroyed.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
That worked for Springer, Stern, Coulter, Imas, and Limbaugh!
Right up until FOX has to step in and get the Supreme Court to declare "lying" as protected free speech... To keep them on the air.
The CONSERVATIVES RULE the airwaves for non-PC talk. Even Springer and Stern are "Right" shows because they treat their subjects as "freak of the week" while shouting "look how offensive I am!"
It's sad when NPR is the last "liberal" holdout.. As they make an honest attempt to have discussion . Even the BBC gets labeled as liberal when they are the closest thing we have to 1960's style news people remember.
The fact is that free speech in America has been getting more and more curtailed. Some in a very overt manner (free speech zones). Some in a softer manner (How DARE you suggest that affirmative action is racist, you racist).
You seem to have a misconception about what free speech is. Your first example is about restricting people to particular locations in order to prevent their speech from being heard... all good so far. Your second example, however, is about someone exercising their free speech to criticize someone else's speech. It is an example of free speech, not an example of free speech being restricted.
Nice ad hominem. Instead of reading the source and arguing with the points made, you drool on yourself and blabber on about Murdoch.
You make a good point that we should be judging articles on their merit, however, technically it was not an ad hominem. An ad hominem is the informal fallacy of claiming some argument is wrong based upon some characteristic of the person making the argument. The previous poster made no claim that the argument was wrong, but merely pointed out the untrustworthy nature of the publication and exposited on what they thought the content was likely to be. I highly encourage you to read a book on informal logic as it is a very useful tool/method and will help you not only argue with more precision, but refine your understanding of logically determining truths.
"Free speech" means that the government doesn't punish you for what you say. Legally, free speech has been increasing steadily: you can say things now about sex, politics, and religion that would have landed you in legal trouble half a century ago.
But "free speech" doesn't mean that you can say anything anywhere without consequences. Your fellow citizens can still punish you for what you say. Business can refuse to deal with you. Liberal universities can kick you out for spewing Christian fundamentalist nonsense, and Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense. That's what living in a free country means. And thanks to the Internet, we have more opportunity to engage in free speech than ever before.
The sky isn't falling on free speech; quite the opposite, free speech is legally protected than ever before and there are more venues for it than ever before. The only thing anybody might reasonably complain about is that tax dollars are used so widely to support one or the other viewpoint indirectly. That's not new, but that kind of (unconstitutional) government support has shifted from conservative causes to liberal causes. The answer is not to shift it back, the answer is to eliminate such government involvement.
This article appears to be bitching and moaning about the fact that hate speech has been universally recognized as out of the scope of free speech. Ann Coulter is generally regarded amongst the cognoscenti as a purveyor of hate speech, not free speech. I fail to see how denying her an audience of like-minded listeners could possibly be bad in any way.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
Anyone who supports this Islamophobic nutbag is a like-minded nutbag who is not welcome on any university campus. Her ideas practically beg to be suppressed, so why should she be surprised when it happens? Good riddance to bad rubbish.
If she is wrong, let her speak and then rebut her remarks. Any suppression of free speech is a mistake. Her "like-minded listeners" will hear her anyway. I don't object to letting her speak. What I object to is "journalists" who report her garbage as though it is coming from a respectable source.
Look, America has an unhealthy obsession with "private-good; public-bad". And guess what, the private sector does not need -- nor desires -- to enforce free speech. You want universities to be havens of free speech? It's a 2-step process:
- make them public / make the institutions which are necessary for the public good follow the same rules as public institutions.
- demand of the public institutions to respect your rights. This is actually pretty easy.
Also, the OP is right: it is a crybaby Murdoch piece about people unhappy that they can't hate in peace.
"If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Except, you and the guy you are supporting are completely wrong about what's going on here. This really is a Murdock propaganda piece. Look, sometimes a person is reliably and consistently stupid and evil. This means saying "oh, I'm sure Ghengis isn't riding towards those young girls to be nice to them" is not prejudice, just justifiable wisdom. Now your point would be really great if this was an exception. But let's see what I find if I look it up.
WSJ:
Actual policy (I'm not going to include the context here; please read yourself):
and in a separate paragraph near to but not related to the definition of harassment, the only use of the word condescending:
If something is put in a media outlet which belongs to Murdock, assuming that the truth is the opposite will only make you wrong about 10% of the time. In this case, it's about Murdock trying to attack the freedom of speech of the people at universities.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
for citizens in good standing. That is the definition of unalienable. Sometimes you have to fight for them though! Not to worry, you are witnessing Peak College. Bloated, wasteful, dysfunctional institutions will vaporize with the credit that pays their ridiculous prices. Goods and services purchased with credit are altered by the supply of said credit. When we stop rewarding failure with bailouts, that is. Affordable education that caters only to the needs of the student body will be a welcome change!
Yeah, well, the site is retarded. They rated my University "red" because we have policies in place to prevent discrimination and hate speech. Heaven forbid the poor racist bastards would get punished if they make some other student who just wants their own educations life a living hell. Same with the sexual harassment codes. Nope, we have to get up in arms just cause you can't derogatorily call that black dude a nigger or the Chinese chick a chink, and damn it all who gives a shit what that chick thinks... we all know they just want the cock, am I right? Seriously, ro read what they have "issues" with the "openness" of the speech with the University of Wisconsin, it's a damn joke.
As long as you are not intentionally being offensive you can chalk messages on the sidewalk... just provide the chalk, no need for permission - this includes political views, religious views, and pretty much anything else you want. Same with dorm rooms, you want to post intentionally offensive stuff on your dorm room? Post it on the inside of the door, the harassment codes specifically state that as a matter of fact.
Shit, we just had an annual remembrance get-together remembering when a bunch of student had a huge protest in the 60's that had hundreds of arrests and over a hundred expulsions. The school provided funds to something that basically was just rubbing the schools face in the dog shit.
TL;DR: site was shit, just a bunch of whiny idiots complaining because they can't be racist / sexist / harassing anyone anywhere.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Forget political parties. Forget Democrat or Republican, or WSJ vs. NYT. If speech is being curtailed, that should concern you.
You make a very good point. If free speech is being infringed by the government we should all be concerned, regardless of who brings that issue to our attention or if the act is being done by a specific political party. I think, however, you go a little too far in your equivocation. The trustworthiness of our sources of information are important and by excluding particular details or simply misrepresenting the facts an issue of speech not being subsidized by a specific organization can be misrepresented as that speech being censored, and make no mistake these are very different things.
When you write, "WSJ vs. NYT" red flags go off in my mind. You're presenting not just publications favored by political parties, but one publication with a very solid history of integrity and factual presentation of information with a publication owned by a very deceptive corporation. The Newscorp organization is a big fan of free speech, insomuch as they went to court to defend their free speech rights to publish news stories they knew were untrue and to fire the reporters who refused to present them. And hey, they're correct. They do have the right to tell complete untruths to their viewers and readers. But at the same time their actions make it abhorrent to mention them in the same breath as the NYT and make me think anyone who believes anything they read in Newscorp publications is an uninformed idiot.
"If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Except, you and the guy you are supporting are completely wrong about what's going on here. This really is a Murdock propaganda piece. Look, sometimes a person is reliably and consistently stupid and evil. This means saying "oh, I'm sure Ghengis isn't riding towards those young girls to be nice to them" is not prejudice, just justifiable wisdom. Now your point would be really great if this was an exception. But let's see what I find if I look it up.
Even a blind pig occasionally finds acorns. My oldest made the comment that "children are nothing but a black hole of need." Some PC idiot said "you can't say that, that's racist." The teacher walked by and told her that she wasn't to make such racist comments in the future (and threatened her with explosion).
Universities are no longer liberal institutions where ideas can be freely discussed. Idiocy and censorship do abound. But feel free to shoot the messenger and ignore the problem.
It's basically a bunch of crybaby Republicans whining about how unwelcome on campus their harassment of women, minorities, gays, muslims, any anyone else not like them is.
Freedom of speech isn't free anymore when you stop crybaby Republicans from whining.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
TFA focuses mainly on content-based restrictions, such as prohibiting people from quoting certain passages from the Koran. But along with these restrictions, many schools now have extremely onerous "time, place, and manner" regulations. Although these are written so as to be blind to the content of the speech, they're often absurdly restrictive. I teach at a community college in Fullerton, California, where last year the police murdered a mentally ill homeless man. This resulted in murder charges being brought by the DA, and a city council recall. I wanted to set up a card table on my school's grassy quad to collect signatures for the recall petition. I went through the process of registering officially, and the restrictions were just nuts. They have two very small patches of grass, over at the corner of the quad, which are marked on the map. I was forbidden from approaching people as they walked by. A lot of colleges refer to these tiny patches, apparently without any consciousness of irony, as free speech zones.
As far as I can tell, the intention is simply to create conditions that make it absolutely impossible for students to stage anything like an actual political rally or protest. You simply wouldn't be able to fit more than about 10 human bodies into one of these free speech zones.
Find free books.
(and threatened her with explosion).
Shouldn't your daughter have reported her as terrorist?
A college education costs more and more and becomes worth less and less. As it is, in many professions, a company will hire someone with a bachelors degree and three years experience before someone with a bachelor's and a master's. This makes the ROI for a master's a negative number. As technology is advancing at an exponential rate, the value of degree decreases at a corresponding rate after it is acquired. The Stanford professor who taught an AI course online and had 100,000 students quit to pursue this methodology full time. MIT is putting all of it's courses online, free. Maybe colleges will become research institutions. But in that regard, when some grad students started working on fuzzy logic, their professors told them "Pursue this and your career is over" and peer-reviewed journals refused to publish their papers. Similar stories come out of every field. Nothing has changed since Galileo. I remember the scene in "Good Will Hunting" where Matt Damon tells a Harvard student that he could have gotten his $50,000 education (back then) for the price of library card. Now it's online. By the way, the text for the AI class was $100. That has to go. Doing a google search and finding that most of the papers on Hidden Markov Models cost $15-$35 is most disconcerting. That has to go. The only people left behind should be alchemists and assholes.
My kingdom for a mod point! Voltaire could not have put it better.
My kingdom for a mod point! Voltaire could not have put it better.
Wow, thankyou sir. I'm certain I've never received a nicer compliment on slashdot, and surely it is undeserved.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The writer is selecting the parts that support the thesis, but says nothing inaccurate. The policy does in fact threaten sanctions for a "condescending sex-based attitude".
a) the writer says it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." where actually harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual conduct which is related to any condition of employment or evaluation of student performance. So the writer is actually saying something "inaccurate"
b) I can't see any sanctions clearly linked to not being "sensitive" which is the only context where this occurs. Now, I am not a lawyer, so I'm quite willing to bow to your 'expert' opinion, however please do explain how you parse the policy so that you see sanctions linked to a "condescending sex-based attitude". I have no doubt that my fascination will be fully aroused by your explanation.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Clearly you don't get the point.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The students who hated all authority in the Sixties were RIGHT, but they sold out for the most part.
Kids, the Man is fucking YOU even harder than he did your predecessors.
Unless you get pissed off enough to act, "prepare your anus".
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yeah, and if you want to say those things on the lawn of the university they need to be stopped too.
This can't say x on public this or that is just bullshit. Limiting speech in public areas is limiting speech. We shouldn't be required to buy our own private areas to exercise free speech. Universities should understand and be ardent supporters of this.
I don't think it's clear at all there, mixing definitions of coercive or sustained harassment and simple "discomfort", though this page this page is more coherent, laying out the "hostile environment" terms. Whether harassment has occurred is "judged both objectively and subjectively", which is another way of saying "No Men Allowed."
The College Republicans regret the controversy surrounding our planned lecture featuring Ann Coulter. The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by surprise, and caused us to question our decision to welcome her to Rose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicans and are inconsistent with both our organization's mission, and the University's. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her before announcing, that is our error and we do not excuse ourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with certain comments by Ms. Coulter we have chosen to cancel the event and rescind Ms. Coulterâ(TM)s invitation to speak at Fordham. We made this choice freely, before Father McShaneâ(TM)s email was sent out and we became aware of his feelings --- had the President simply reached out to us before releasing his statement he would have learned that the event was being cancelled. We hope the University community will forgive the College Republicans for our error, and continue to allow us to serve as its main voice of the sensible, compassionate, and conservative political movement that we strive to be. We fell short of that standard this time, and we offer our sincere apologies.
Ted Conrad, President
UPDATED: McShane Responds to College Republicans' Cancellation of Ann Coulter Event
The Republican Club tried to get the Student Association to spring for George Will, but was capped at $10,000. Fordham College Republicans withdraw Coulter invite
The Speaker's Bureau:
Campus Speaker & Board of Advisors Member - Ann Coulter
Click here to host an event with Ann on your campus!
Fun times:
The incident followed a Monday night lecture at the University of Western Ontario, where Coulter told a Muslim student to "take a camel" as an alternative to flying.
Coulter made the comment as she responded to a question from student Fatima Al-Dhaher, who asked about previous comments in which Coulter said Muslims shouldn't be allowed on airplanes and should take "flying carpets" instead. Al-Dhaher noted she did not own a flying carpet and asked what she should take as an alternative transportation. Coulter did not deny making the flying carpet comment and replied to the university student, "What mode of transportation? Take a camel," to jeers and cheers. It was a decidedly pro-Coulter audience. One man, who identified himself as a U.S. citizen, described U.S. President Barack Obama as a "Marxist."
She is well-known for her vehement views against Muslims. In a post-September 11 column, she wrote that the U.S. should invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
Coulter, who often comments on Fox News, once said Canada is "lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent" after the Canadian government did not join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Coulter speech cancelled over fears of violence
Free speech: you don't get it. You think "harassment" is something else than the legal definition. You think "hate speech" is something different from speech. You even think a ceremony funded by the school is the height of "free speech"! Though to be fair, those aren't really your thoughts.
I don't think it's clear at all there,
I'd agree there. It's an awful piece of writing which the university should be ashamed of. However it doesn't actually say anything threatening and if they did try it on they would lose of ever pushed to it.
this page this page is more coherent, laying out the "hostile environment" terms. Whether harassment has occurred is "judged both objectively and subjectively", which is another way of saying "No Men Allowed."
I definitely support the principle that "The issue is not whether you are paranoid, the issue is whether you are paranoid enough" but in this case you are being paranoid ;-) The fact is though, that this is basically just a direct cut'n paste from Davis, the related supreme court judgement. For the University it's saying we match exactly what the supreme court told us to do. For real life it's saying that you can't be done for harassment just because some delicate flower felt harassed; you have to actually objectively harass them. It's also saying that if they were (literally) asking for it and don't feel that they were harassed, it's still okay even if, according to the objective standards you could have been said to be harassing them.
In other words, this particular statement is pretty much 100% on the side of sanity and definitely doesn't mean "man == harasser", however much Andrea Dworkin might wish it to mean that.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
What is not permitted is actual hate speech, behavior intended to incite violence toward a group, or intentionally cause emotional harm (arguably another form of violence, simply a non-physical one).
These are all protected under the US constitution, and for good reason.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If the WSJ is excluding details to make a point, it is the epitome of triviality to argue against those points by showing what was excluded. If the WSJ is wrong about something, prove it.
I think other posters have already covered that pretty well. The WSJ clearly was trying to misconstrue the facts and sensationalize.
Otherwise, just stuff it, because your cheerleading for the NYT at the expense of the WSJ won't convince anyone.
This isn't about "cheerleading". I'm not particularly a fan of the NYT, but I certainly recognize them as a a normal, reputable newspaper that does research, vets their sources, makes an attempt not to print outright falsehoods, and prints retractions. Newscorp owned properties are something else. To pretend they should be given equal weight on their face is just absurd at this point. It really isn't news, it's an attempt to persuade.
Those who are "uniformed idiots" because they read the WSJ certainly won't be convinced (the name calling is a nice touch - really brings people to your way of thinking).
If you get your news from a source that went to court to defend their constitutional right to lie to their readers/viewers, what else would such a person be called? You pretty much have to be uninformed and/or an idiot to trust such a "news" source.
And those who already agree with you don't need convincing.
Here's where you mistake. I'm not trying to convince people. That's rhetoric. I'm presenting a logical argument. Frankly, I don't expect people to change their minds as most people are just looking for anything to justify what they already believe. Instead I'm writing to respond to those that can still argue logically and really, fuck the rest of you. This is Slashdot, news for nerds. If you can't handle logic why would I care about your opinion?
Rational thinkers will not be convinced, and those are the only ones you can possibly hope to sway.
Rational thinkers ignore the rhetoric you endorse. Wasting time coddling people who insist on believing things written by a propaganda company proven to repeatedly lie are the ones beyond hope.
The "free thinking" radicals of the 60's counter culture movement, are today's 50 & 60 year old "professors" in most major institutions. Couple that with the ideology they have pushed in primary & secondary schools over the last 25 years, and they have melded the minds of today's 20-30 year old adults into believing that free speech is only free as long as you believe what they believe. If not, you are to be told you are a __________(insert favorite PC term), and need to be silenced. Until THAT ideology is removed, and the so called political correctness "movement" is contained, nothing will change it.
I'm a Republican and I'm not whiny. Let's look at it from my perspective. The colleges are indoctrinating the youth with no opposition.
Why does your perspective have to be so absolute? That seems to be the problem. Nothing prevents universities from bringing in any speakers they want so long as they do so within the bounds of the constitution and if they allow/pay one religion to speak they do the same for all. That seems to be the fundamental disconnect in my mind. When everyone is given equal opportunity, why do you whine about not being given more than equal opportunity?
Harassment of women: This is strictly about abortion.
Actually if you read the article and the actual policies at the university it claims to cite, this is about no employee making grades or employment based upon requirement that people have the same views. So no, it isn't about abortion... but lets continue.
For sake of argument pretend you believe life begins at conception. Would you be OK with a form of birth control that ended a human life each time it was used? You can argue that life doesn't begin at conception but that's not the point. The point is, if yo believe life DOES begin at conception then how could you act any different than the Republicans do?
You see I believe in freedom. For example, I believe 99% of people who shoot pigeons are jackasses. They're hunting for sport, wasting good meat, and they mostly are macho dickheads trying to compensate for their own inadequacy. I voted to give them the freedom to choose to continue this sport, even though I disapprove.
Even if I believed life began at conception I can still rationally demonstrate that that is just an opinion and unprovable. Further I can logically demonstrate it is a faith based opinion not supported by science. So even if I believe it, I would still support the right of other individuals to make their own choices based on their own beliefs and if there is a god, let him judge them.
It's called "freedom" and it's not just a bumper sticker or a campaign slogan. Maybe you should try believing in it instead of just saying it like a parrot.
Other than that, there is no harassment of women from Republicans.
Umm, yeah. Except all the other harassment about things like homosexuality, subservience to men, etc.
Minorities: Affirmative action, you can't make up for past discrimination by enforcing racial discrimination upon everyone.
Is that truly what you believe the purpose of affirmative action is, punitive? Maybe you should read something that isn't from the right wing. Try reading how affirmative action changed, for example, politics and business in northern Europe removing in a few generations the prejudice of centuries.
Gays: All about marriage. I had a gay room mate. I have many friends who are gay, I live in California. I am against gay marriage.
Please. Before gay marriage Republicans fought against homosexuality being legal at all and after they lose gay marriage they'll still be fighting against the rights of gays to adopt children. Why do you hate freedom? For a party who opposes "big government" you sure do believe in the government making choices for other people and getting in people's personal business. Here's an idea, don't like gay marriage? Don't marry any gay people and shut the hell up and mind your own business.
Muslims: sorry, I can't give you a rational argument you will accept (not that I expect you to accept my point of view on any of these). Muslims are responsible for 99% of all terrorist attacks in the world.
Have you considered learning facts? They make decision making much more accurate.
...as for "anyone else not like them" pure bullshit. You people on the left chastise and berate anyone who is a Republican.
And, in fact, the greatest damage moderates and right-wing could do to the left wing extremists is to invite them to freely speak their minds. The resulting spew of sexist, anti-Semitic, elitist, racist, and hate filled non-sequiturs would likely shift most people just a bit to the right.