By Greg Dick, For The Miami Student
A few weeks ago, Jonathan Chait published an essay in New York Magazine accusing the left of being the very opposite of liberal. Citing the negative impact political correctness is having on liberalism, the article - which at times painted leftists more as fascists than liberals - sparked a lot of debate.
Still, for all of the discussion, and there was plenty on the blogosphere, there seems to have been a lack of conversation in the places where the article mattered most - college campuses.
It was here, at some of America's "finest institutions of higher learning" that Chait found the majority of his examples of "pc policing" run amok. It is also on these campuses where it appears Chait's larger point failed to come across.
A quick glance at the campus papers of Rutgers, Haverford and Brandeis - all cited as examples in Chait's piece - reveals that no columns or editorials were dedicated to a discussion of the criticism leveled at those institutions.
Surely this is because the members of these communities are busy being social justice warriors and not because they do not know who Jonathan Chait is or what he has written.
And, regardless of their reasons for not discussing Chait's essay, the examples from these campuses show just how badly a discussion about the state of academia and its role in thought/speech policing is needed.
At Rutgers and Brandeis, graduation speakers have had their invitations to speak rescinded on account of hurt feelings and ideological disagreements and trigger warnings are attached to anything and everything that might offend someone [read provoke thought].
In the case of Haverford, you get everything you'd expect at Brandeis and Rutgers but you also get members of the campus trying to prevent the transphobic "Vagina Monologues" from performed because the play is not inclusive of "women with penises."
The silliness of these examples should be enough to indicate that thought and speech policing is a real problem on college campuses, but sadly these things are more the norm than the exception.
In fact, to see this general willingness on the part of some in academia to browbeat and bully those who think differently into silence one needs to look no further than the red brick building here on Miami's own campus.
Just last October, members of the Miami faculty demanded that George Will be uninvited from speaking at the annual Anderson Lecture. Deciding that Will was a rape culture apologist, the thought police numbering seventeen hundred strong (roughly 10 percent of the total campus community), decided to circulate a petition as a show of force.
Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter
And, before getting to another instance where the thought police got up in arms at Miami, I want to quickly point out that Will was guilty of the heinous crime of supporting this little thing in the Constitution called Due Process.
Another instance that Chait could have very easily cited happened several months before Will came to campus. It was then that graduate students and faculty members in the English Department demanded that the President of the Graduate Student Association be removed from office after they disagreed with a satirical piece he wrote for Her Campus.
Since the members of the faculty's sensibilities seemed offended by Due Process and satire, it's no wonder that the support of free expression and free thought Chait is looking for from academics and self-described liberals, remains absent to some extent on Miami's campus.
Still, the similarities between the campuses cited in Chait's article and the actions of members within the Miami community don't end there, Miami has also curiously had no apparent discussion of Chait's essay in the classrooms that encourage students to act out in effort to silence those they disagree with.
When I asked several of my peers involved in the WGS program if they had read the Chait piece, none of them had. Meaning there has very likely been no discussion of Chait's essay within the either of the Departments.
Perhaps, if more members on Miami's campus were to read Chait's critic of "pc policing" there would be less people who see silencing others as a useful tactic.
Perhaps then too, certain members of academia would start to appreciate the principles they pretend to care about - freedom of speech and diversity of thought.
Read More
Not getting a job straight out of college is OK, and can be encouraged
By Molly Francis | YesterdayOpinion writer Molly Francis urges college students to consider how a gap year may be more beneficial than getting a job right after graduation.
Junior perspectives on embracing the final stretch of college
By Halle Grant | 2 days agoAmidst all this chaos of student life, opinion writer Halle Grant has come to the realization that nothing is really that deep in college.
New tunes, new me: Using music to freshen up life
By Taylor Powers | 3 days agoWhile routines aren't necessarily a bad thing, it's important we make an effort to switch things up now and then to keep life feeling new, exciting and fresh. Staff writer Taylor Powers has found this avenue through music.