GEORGE WILL
Published: Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 5:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, December 3, 2012 at 4:48 p.m.
In 2007, Keith John Sampson, a middle-aged student working his
way through Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis as a
janitor, was declared guilty of racial harassment. Without granting
Sampson a hearing, the university administration convicted him of
"openly reading (a) book related to a historically and racially
abhorrent subject."
"Openly." "Related to." Good grief.
The
book, "Notre Dame vs. the Klan," celebrated the 1924 defeat of the Ku
Klux Klan in a fight with Notre Dame students. But some of Sampson's
co-workers disliked the book's cover, which featured a black-and-white
photograph of a Klan rally. Someone was offended, therefore someone else
must be guilty of harassment.
This
nonsequitur reflects the right never to be annoyed, a new campus
entitlement. Legions of administrators, who now outnumber full-time
faculty, are kept busy making students mind their manners, with good
manners understood as conformity to liberal politics.
Liberals
are most concentrated and untrammeled on campuses, so look there for
evidence of what, given the opportunity, they would do to America. Ample
evidence is in "Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of
American Debate" by Greg Lukianoff, 38, a graduate of Stanford Law
School who describes himself as a liberal, pro-choice, pro-gay rights,
lifelong Democrat who belongs to "the notoriously politically correct
Park Slope Food Co-Op in Brooklyn" and has never voted for a Republican
"nor do I plan to." But as president of the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education (FIRE), he knows that the most common justifications
for liberal censorship are "sensitivity" about "diversity" and
"multiculturalism," as academic liberals understand those things.
In recent years, a University
of Oklahoma vice president has declared that no university resources,
including e-mail, could be used for "the forwarding of political
humor/commentary." The College at Brockport in New York banned using the
Internet to "annoy or otherwise inconvenience" anyone. Rhode Island
College prohibited, among many other things, certain "attitudes." Texas
Southern University's comprehensive proscriptions included "verbal harm"
from damaging "assumptions" or "implications." Texas A&M promised
"freedom from indignity of any type." Davidson banned "patronizing
remarks." Drexel University forbade "inappropriately directed laughter."
Western Michigan University banned "sexism," including "the perception"
of a person "not as an individual, but as a member of a category based
on sex." Banning "perceptions" must provide full employment for the
burgeoning ranks of academic administrators.
Many
campuses congratulate themselves on their broad-mindedness when they
establish small "free-speech zones" where political advocacy can be
scheduled. At one point Texas Tech's 28,000 students had a "free-speech
gazebo" that was 20 feet wide. And you thought the First Amendment made
America a free-speech zone.
At
Tufts, a conservative newspaper committed "harassment" by printing
accurate quotations from the Koran and a verified fact about the status
of women in Saudi Arabia. Lukianoff says that Tufts may have been the
first American institution "to find someone guilty of harassment for
stating verifiable facts directed at no one in particular."
He
documents how "orientation" programs for freshmen become propaganda to
(in the words of one orthodoxy enforcer) "leave a mental footprint on
their consciousness." Faculty, too, can face mandatory
consciousness-raising.
In
2007, Donald Hindley, a politics professor at Brandeis, was found
guilty of harassment because when teaching Latin American politics he
explained the origin of the word "wetbacks," which refers to immigrants
crossing the Rio Grande. Without a hearing, the university provost sent
Hindley a letter stating that the university "will not tolerate
inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct." The assistant provost
was assigned to monitor Hindley's classes "to ensure that you do not
engage in further violations of the nondiscrimination and harassment
policy." Hindley was required to attend "anti-discrimination training."
Such
coercion is a natural augmentation of censorship. Next comes mob rule.
Last year, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the vice provost for
diversity and climate — really; you can't make this stuff up —
encouraged students to disrupt a news conference by a speaker opposed to
racial preferences. They did, which the vice provost called "awesome."
This is the climate on an especially liberal campus that celebrates
"diversity" in everything but thought.
What happens on campus,"
Lukianoff says, "doesn't stay on campus" because censorship has
"downstream effects." He quotes a sociologist whose data he says
demonstrate that "those with the highest levels of education have the
lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view." Parents'
tuition dollars and student indebtedness pay for this.
Good grief.
Will is a Washington Post columnist. His email is
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