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America's Ten Most Oppressive Colleges
An anonymous reader writes: A new review of free speech on campuses across the United States has listed the country's ten most oppressive colleges, with examples of why they earned this odious status.
The first link is the actual report, while the second provides a good quick summary. In either case, the behavior of college officials in attempting to squelch dissent is quite disgusting. Far more horrifying and worrisome for the future were the number of cases where the students themselves moved to stamp down on opposing views. They are the future, and that future does not look pleasant. In South Carolina students are suing their college for interrogating them for daring to hold an event in support of free speech that offended some students.
The first link is the actual report, while the second provides a good quick summary. In either case, the behavior of college officials in attempting to squelch dissent is quite disgusting. Far more horrifying and worrisome for the future were the number of cases where the students themselves moved to stamp down on opposing views. They are the future, and that future does not look pleasant. In South Carolina students are suing their college for interrogating them for daring to hold an event in support of free speech that offended some students.
'Oppressive' seems a bit over-the-top. Even TFA article doesn't use that word.
Next up: "America's Most Genocidal Colleges"!
The John William Pope Center is a mouthpiece for a right-wing think tank, and is no friend of higher education.
That having been said, some of the incidents described are pretty egregious. But then university administrators have been cowardly autocrats since universities began.
The "source" is one of the heads of FIRE, which is a civil liberties organization specifically devoted to issues like protecting the free speech rights of students and faculty from everything from overly broad speech codes, to not getting tenure because the professor fails to hold the right views. Chances are that if you are a university student or professor who has been victimized by campus commissars of political correctness, you will be represented by FIRE if you aren't doing it by yourself.
Your whole comment just screams "ad hominem" because it focuses on one particular source cited when the writer is the head of a different organization that has an excellent record at defending the rights of students and faculty from campus autocrats. And yes, that is "ad hominem" in the true sense. Hey folks, don't believe it because damn dirty right wingers are involved, even if they are arguing that college campuses are trampling the rights of political minorities.
Everyone knows racism, sexism, etc don't count against straight white cis males.
Unless you're the only white guy in a black social studies or women lit class. Then you bear the responsibility for 400+ years of racism (American slavery) and 6,000+ years of sexism (Adam's rib). Fortunately, my instructors protected me from being lynched or castrated by my fellow classmates.
No, they don't. They have doctrinal statements for faculty and staff, and may have stricter conduct codes, but they are generally willing to enroll students of any faith/non-faith who are will to abide by the conduct codes
I work at a Catholic university. When I first started here, I was extremely cautious about my agnostic views, but over time learned that most of the people here are open to and nice about alternative views. I've even become friends with the campus ministry and they know of my leanings. I think part of it is that I'm as respectful of their views as they are of mine and we work together with common purpose. I know Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and even atheists on staff and in faculty, and have never witnessed any kind of retribution against anyone because of their religious beliefs.
Besides the fact the article is lacking in its method to rank the schools, they forgot about Wheaton College.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Full-disclosure: I attended BYU and actually really enjoyed my time there. Brigham Young University should be on that list. Student's will be expelled (and their transcripts locked so they can't transfer credits either) if they convert from Mormonism to any other religion while a student. You can literally get academically disciplined for profanity or criticizing LDS leaders. It isn't just student's though. Faculty can also get in serious trouble for what they say. For example, a BYU professor and historian (Michael Quinn) was strongly pressured to leave after he published honest histories of the LDS church's history with polygamy. He had been an excellent professor as evidenced by the fact that one of his years at BYU the graduating class voted him the best professor on campus. BYU is absolutely not a place where you can talk about the LDS church honestly and openly without getting kicked out (at least if you want to talk about large parts of history that the church tries to bury).
You're mostly right. Most of these jackoffs complaining about being censored or oppressed are just are really just complaining about not being able to say whatever comes to mind and suffering zero criticism for it.
These people are not being criticised, they are being expelled or fired. People can say whatever comes to their minds and people can criticise them for it, but they can not retaliate against them what would be in violation of the law.
Ordered as presented, ranking not given. Read the article for why.
Mount St. Mary's University
Northwestern University
Louisiana State University
University of California, San Diego
Saint Mary's University of Minnesota
University of Oklahoma
Marquette University
Colorado College
University of Tulsa
Wesleyan University
No, they don't. They have doctrinal statements for faculty and staff, and may have stricter conduct codes, but they are generally willing to enroll students of any faith/non-faith who are will to abide by the conduct codes
I attended Brigham Young University (owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Tithing from the faithful subsidize students' education, so members of the faith pay a lower tuition (like how residents pay less at state universities). Faculty and students must sign the Honor Code and receive an Ecclesiastic Endorsement on a yearly basis. In essence, you promise to live up to dress and grooming standards, live the Word of Wisdom (no alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, or illicit drugs), follow moral rules (no extra-marital sex, no men in the ladies dorms [or vice verse] after midnight), etc. This does not exclude students from other religions - or even atheists - but most students are LdS.
Sharia Law is to Muslim as Catholic is to Christianity. They are certainly tangentially based on the original source materials, but they took centuries of refinements to build up a set of strange nonsense rules that represent their original source version of things. Looking back at the rules they form, and one has to question why they were ever made. Plus, Sharia itself doesn't have a central authority to dictate, so maybe something like like the collage of baptist faiths would be a better analogy.
Secondly, much like described above, since all Muslims don't believe in the Sharia, why would you ever assume that a Muslim university (especially in the US) would espouse it?
Bye!
Liberty U is very tolerant of other views - as are most Christian Schools - being a core element of their beliefs.
Bullshit.
From every job listing for Liberty
Disclaimer Statement: Liberty University's hiring practices and EEO Statement are fully in compliance with both federal and state law. Federal law creates an exception to the "religion" component of the employment discrimination laws for religious organizations (including educational institutions), and permits them to give employment preference to members of their own religion. Liberty University is in that category.
That particular entry I pulled out at random was for a Network Engineering job. If you aren't a Baptist you can't even plug in network cables there. I've personally known people who have lied about their religion to get a job there, and people who got rejected for being Catholic. Employees sign a "Way of Life" contract.
Tolerant my left nut.
It may be that FIRE's top list is still more of an issue for legitimate reasons because many of these universities are large, public universities and thus engaging in trampling on free speech is even more serious, but it does seem like FIRE's own biases may be having a role in what they've decided to highlight.
I don't know if it is a bias for many of them. Quite a few are bad all by themselves without a liberal or conservative bias. I thought this one was beautifully told: Following a spate of “Black Lives Matter” protests, the student newspaper published a column that took issue with some of the BLM rhetoric, arguing that it encouraged violence. Angry BLM supporters quickly circulated a petition demanding that the university defund the paper unless their demands were met, including mandatory “social justice/diversity” training for the paper’s editors and guaranteed space in the paper for articles representing “marginalized groups and voices.” The protesters also threatened to steal and destroy copies of the paper unless their demands were met.
TL;DR for that:
The school paper says "These groups are violent." and the groups reply "Take that back or we'll destroy your stuff!" The university leaders give in to the violent protester demands, squelching the school's newspaper.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement