[VIDEO] Harvard Tells Students Gender Identity Can Change Day-to-Day
Posted: April 22, 2017 Filed under: Education, Mediasphere | Tags: Academia, Gender, Gender identity, Harvard, LGTBQ, media, news, PC, Politically Correct, Radical Left, Safe Space Leave a comment
Where Speech Is Least Free In America
Posted: December 17, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Think Tank | Tags: Campus, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Fox News Channel, Freedom of speech, Higher Education, Petition, Safe Space, Student, Yale University Leave a commentGeorge Leef writes: A good argument can be made nowhere in America is free speech less safe than on private college and university campuses.
“There is a limit to ‘bait-and-switch’ techniques that promise academic freedom and legal equality but deliver authoritarianism and selective censorship.”
On public college and universities, the First Amendment applies, thus giving students, faculty members, and everyone else protection against official censorship or punishment for saying things that some people don’t want said. A splendid example of that was brought to a conclusion earlier this year at Valdosta State University, where the school’s president went on a vendetta against a student who criticized his plans for a new parking structure – and was clobbered in court. (I discussed that case here.)
But the First Amendment does not apply to private colleges and universities because they don’t involve governmental action. Oddly, while all colleges that accept federal student aid money must abide by a vast host of regulations, the Supreme Court ruled in Rendell-Baker v. Kohn that acceptance of such money does not bring them under the umbrella of the First Amendment.
[Read the full story here, at Forbes]
At private colleges, the protection for freedom of speech has to be found (at least in most states) in the implicit contract the school enters into with each incoming student. Ordinarily, the school holds itself out as guaranteeing certain things about itself and life on campus in its handbook and other materials. If school officials act in ways that depart significantly from the reasonable expectations it created, then the college can be held liable. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Yale Students Sign Petition to Repeal the First Amendment
Posted: December 17, 2015 Filed under: Education, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Campus, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Freedom of speech, Hidden camera, Higher Education, Political Satire, Safe Space, Student, video, Yale University Leave a comment
Political satirist Ami Horowitz tests the waters at Yale University to see if today’s Ivy League students would actually sign a petition to repeal the first amendment.
Why College Kids Can’t Take a Joke
Posted: June 11, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Comics, Entertainment, Humor | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Sommers, comedy, Feminism, Kirsten Powers, Progressivism, Purdue University, Racism, Safe Space, Sexism, Trauma trigger, Trigger Warning, University of Chicago Leave a commentKyle Smith writes: What’s the deal with young people today? “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist,’ ‘That’s sexist,’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” Jerry Seinfeld told ESPN’s Colin Cowherd this week. “They don’t know what the f—k they’re talking about.”
“I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.”
— Chris Rock
Comics are afraid to work on college campuses, Seinfeld said. To give an idea of how young people think, he cited a bizarre response his 14-year-old daughter made when his wife noted that the girl might want to go to New York City from the suburbs more often “So you can see boys.” The girl replied that the remark was “sexist,” her father said.
“There is a word…That word is illiberal; there is nothing ‘conservative’ about it.”
— Kyle Smith
The determination of the identity-politics obsessed to shut down speech on campus inspired a couple of hilarious one-liners in the past year. One was from The Onion: “College Encourages Lively Exchange of Idea: Students, Faculty Invited to Freely Express Single Viewpoint.” The other, though unintentionally funny, was equally amusing, and came from Chris Rock: “I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.”
There is a word for the move to ban a screening of 2014’s most popular movie, American Sniper (and replace it with Paddington), to hound a major university into rescinding its honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to punish someone with a Title IX investigation for the crime of questioning the wisdom of certain Title IX investigations, and designating a “safe space” to which to flee after failing to prevent a speech by Christina Hoff Sommers from taking place. Read the rest of this entry »