Arguments over free speech on campus are not left v right

Economist ^ | 11 Sep 2017 | Economist

[Cronos]

Reed College students were ranked as the most liberal and the second most studious in Princeton Review’s survey of its top 382 liberal arts colleges. That compound of leftist politics and serious scholarship proved unstable last year as activists managed to cow the college’s administration, students and faculty alike.

...Demonstrators said Ms Valdivia was guilty of a variety of offences: she was a “race traitor” who upheld white supremacist principles by failing to oppose the Humanities syllabus. She was “anti-black” because she appropriated black slang by wearing a T-shirt that said, “Poetry is Lit”. She was an “ableist” because she believes trigger warnings sometimes diminish sexual trauma. She was also called a “gaslighter” for making disadvantaged students doubt their own feelings of oppression. “I am intimidated by these students,” she later wrote in a blog post. “I am scared to teach courses on race, gender or sexuality or even texts that bring these issues up in any way…I’m at a loss as to how to begin to address it, especially since many of these students don’t believe in historicity or objective facts (they denounce the latter as being a tool of the white cisheteropatriarchy).”

A few weeks later, the college invited Kimberly Peirce, the gender-fluid director of “Boys Don’t Cry”, which was widely praised as the first sympathetic portrayal of trans people in cinema. Protesters ripped down posters promoting the event and put up their own posters that said: “Fuck this cis white bitch” (“cis” being shorthand for cisgendered, or people who identify with their birth sex) and “Fuck your transphobia.”.. The dean of faculty, Nigel Nicholson, later wrote that students came to the session “asking questions designed to indict the speaker…It felt like a courtroom, not a college.”

[Cronos]

the left will eat itself

[cynwoody]

Reed is less famous for its graduates than for its dropouts, one of whom lasted a semester before going on to found the most valuable company in the world.

[Impala64ssa]

< “I am scared to teach courses on race, >
Here's an idea, why not take Morgan Freeman's advice, STOP TALKING ABOUT IT!. On this one

It's shiite like this that makes it hard for me to blame millenials who default on their student loans. Since they like to organize, perhaps they should file some kind of class actions against the diploma mills who indoctrinated them with this crapola. They're getting anything BUT a quality education with the life skills they need. Surely there's enough of them who are smart enough to realize they've been scammed big time.

[Nifster]

That’s fine as long as they don’t destroy the rest of us in the process

[Billthedrill]

No, but it is totalitarian mind police on the Left versus the normal, sane world. It’s slowly dawning on even liberals that you can’t be these people’s friend, because nothing will ever be enough. The safest thing to be is their outspoken enemy.

[Edward.Fish]

perhaps they should file some kind of class actions against the diploma mills who indoctrinated them with this crapola

I'd be all for that; I'd also be all for companies doing class actions against schools that let the incompetent through. (I'm in a STEM-field job, and I've had interviews that are honestly insulting considering my degree, when I ask them about this the employers say that it's because they've had degreed hires that couldn't do it.)

[jim35]

These colleges will be run into the ground by their own self-destructive policies, and suffocate under their own dead weight. When they are finally closed, buried and defunct, they will not be mourned.

[Gene Eric]

"cis” being shorthand for cisgendered, or people who identify with their birth sex

Just in case you didn't realize you need an explanation.

[FreedomPoster]

I’d love to hear a specific example, just to see how far we sunk. I’ve got a couple of reasonably serious STEM degrees myself.

[momincombatboots]

What? Are you kidding? The first term of the Pelosi presidency ihas arrived. Amnesty is here.. the left has been posting articles saying if Mexico can beat Reagan, they can beat trump.. know your enemy.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“”cis” being shorthand for cisgendered, or people who identify with their birth sex”

I object to this term for chemical structure being appropriated by losers in sociology/humanities.

[Wuli]

The author is wrong. It is Left vs right, only the Left’s fellow travelers, having never been taught to perform critical rational analysis, don’t readily recognize their own Leftist instincts manifested in the new Left movements to silence any remaining opposition. All the new Left activists are doing is taking Leftist advocacy to its next “logical” steps.

[Moltke]

many of these students don’t believe in historicity or objective facts (they denounce the latter as being a tool of the white cisheteropatriarchy).”

What are these people doing in college in the first place?