If you want ongoing information on the insanity which currently pervades so many of our colleges and universities, you would do well to real campusreform.org on a regular basis.
Here is its latest example, as excerpted from Toni Airaksinen’s article:
A group of Wellesley College professors recently sent a campus-wide email arguing that bringing controversial speakers to campus can cause grave harm to students.
“Students…often feel the injury most acutely and invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers’ arguments.” Tweet This
Noting that Wellesley has hosted “several guest speakers with controversial and objectionable beliefs” in recent years, the professors say that while the believe free speech is “essential to a liberal arts education…there is no doubt that the speakers in question impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley.”
Specifically, they reference the “aftermath” of professor Laura Kipnis’ lecture at Wellesley, noting that her appearance inspired students to post a video on Facebook responding to her ideas. Kipnis later posted the video to her own Facebook page, in response to which a Wellesley professor “left a comment that publicly disparaged the students who produced the video.”
To protect students from having to encounter disagreeable ideas, they conclude with three suggestions for handling speaker invitations going forward, starting with an offer to themselves serve as a “sounding board” for prospective hosts “to help sponsors think through the various implications of extending an invitation.”
Campus Reform has reached out to the professors who wrote the letter asking for clarification on where they stand on free speech, but had not received a response from any of them by press time.
Wonderful A group Wellesley professors – with the most benevolent of motives, no doubt – wants to set itself up as a censorship board, which will decide what ideas its students – who pay about $64,000 a year in tuition, room and board – should and should not be exposed to.
Poor little snowflakes can’t be expected to do that on their own, you see.
If you want to see the actual letter referenced above, it is available by clicking here, which takes you to the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (FIRE) website – another must-read for people concerned about what our institutions of higher education have degenerated into.
If this is indicative of the conditions under which Wellesley College students “learn”, then God help them (assuming, of course, that God has not been censored out of the school yet).
