Battle Against Hate Speech Gives Rise to A Generation That Hates Speech

[Zinhead]

From Newsweek:

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/06/03/college-campus-free-speech-thought-police-463536.html

During his 18 years as president of Lebanon Valley College during the middle of the past century, Clyde Lynch led the tiny Pennsylvania liberal arts institution through the tribulations of the Great Depression and World War II, then raised $550,000 to build a new gymnasium before he died in 1950. In gratitude, college trustees named that new building after him.Neither Lynch nor those trustees could have predicted there would come a day when students would demand that his name be stripped from the Lynch Memorial Hall because the word lynch has “racial overtones.” But that day did come.

When playwright Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues, which premiered in 1996 and has been performed thousands of times by actors, celebrities and college students, she probably did not foresee a day when a performance of her feminist agitprop would be canceled because it was offensive to “women without vaginas.” And yet that day did come—at Mount Holyoke, one of the nation’s premier women’s colleges.

[Matmaven]

Thanks for sharing this. Very well written and insightful. It is encouraging to see that there is recognition across the ideological spectrum that there has been negative impact on free speech across many, many campuses.

“For decades, conservatives have complained about the wave of “political correctness,” hypersensitivity and hostility toward contrary ideas at colleges and universities run by “the radical left.” But now a small but increasing number of progressive professors, writers and students have begun to speak out. A group of humanities professors wrote on Inside Higher Ed that trigger warnings had a “chilling effect” on their teaching. A small number of fired or investigated professors are fighting back.”