On Tuesday, the 84th Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, tore into the affront to free speech on college campuses across the country.
“The American university was once the center of academic freedom — a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas.” Sessions said Tuesday, “But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”
Never has an issue in American history garnered such bipartisan agreement than the importance of upholding free speech. Our civil society is based on dialogic traditions that insures the pursuit of truth and justice. But now, college administrations are actively corroding the foundations of our most cherished institutions through extensive political censorship and their refusal to enforce the law.
On Tuesday, the 84th Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, tore into the affront to free speech on college campuses across the country.
“The American university was once the center of academic freedom — a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas.” Sessions said Tuesday, “But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”
Never has an issue in American history garnered such bipartisan agreement than the importance of upholding free speech. Our civil society is based on dialogic traditions that insures the pursuit of truth and justice. But now, college administrations are actively corroding the foundations of our most cherished institutions through extensive political censorship and their refusal to enforce the law.
This position has been encouraged by Leftist administrators that are firm adherents of “microaggression,” “virtuosity of victimhood” culture, and the philosophy of intersectionality at large.
The result of sheltering “fragile egos” should terrify us.
The Brookings Institute conducted a First Amendment-related study with college-aged students. They found that 19% of students believed violence is acceptable to quash a speaker who says, “offensive and hurtful things.” A stunning 44% of students believe that the legally undefined, utterly subjective “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment, and 51% of students think it is appropriate to shut down speakers they deem offensive.
Anarchic, Leftist organizations like Antifa have exploited this perverse way of thinking. Their recruits are predominantly young, single males that live with their parents. These organizations are composed of bad actors, but universities have given them a foothold and normalized their actions by succumbing to the “heckler’s veto.” In Sessions words, “In these instances, administrators discourage or prohibit speech if there is even a threat that it will be met with protest. In other words, the school favors the heckler’s disruptive tactics over the speaker’s First Amendment rights.” Of course, this appeases the wishes of these organizations and only incentivizes them to perpetrate more violence.
On September 14, my student organization, the Berkeley College Republicans, hosted Ben Shapiro at UC Berkeley. The Berkeley municipality allegedly spent $600,000 on security to “brace” for his arrival.
Planning the Shapiro event was riddled with irritating administrative hurdles and vitriol from the Berkeley community. Students were even offered counseling resources if they felt distressed or endangered by the scary views Ben Shapiro was about to spew on campus (a point Sessions rightly scoffed at).
In the end, Shapiro spoke before a packed house and his speech has been viewed upwards of 2 million times on the internet, a feat the Attorney General called a “victory for free speech” because “constitutional rights may not be denied simply because of hostility to their assertion or exercise,” as the Supreme Court ruled in Watson v. City of Memphis.
Universities struggle to grasp this concept, and I am grateful the Department of Justice will proactively “enforce federal law, defend free speech, and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come.” Students with unpopular political views are entitled to have their Constitutional rights protected, and we must nip this trend in the bud before it completely dissolves sane political discourse in our Republic.
(First reported by The Daily Wire) http://www.dailywire.com/news/21647/sessions-american-university-shelter-fragile-egos-bradley-devlin (September 28, 2017)
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