Free speech on campus or not?

Our socialist friends are writhing in dismay at the abrogation of their so-called free speech rights. Exhibits A, B, C, and D are graduate students studying at Columbia (Yunseo Chung from South Korea, Mahmoud Khalil from Syria, and Ranjani Srinivasan from India) and at Tufts (Rumeysa Ozturk from Turkey). The school on Morningside Heights in Manhattan seems to have more than its fair share of such episodes.

Yes, in an ideal sense, we should all have the same rights, citizens and green card–holders alike. However, in point of law, matters are very different.

Let us focus on the case of Mr. Khalil, since his is the most high-profile of all these occurrences. I describe these rights as “so-called” because he had his green card lifted — not because of anything he wrote or said, but rather due to his numerous trespasses.

He occupied campus property that did not belong to him. There was a tent city in the middle of the quad and the occupation of Hamilton Hall. This Hamas-supporter contributed to the invasion of the rights of other students, particularly those of the Jewish faith. Thanks to Khalil, they were not able to go about their lawful business in an attempt to gain an education. These rights of theirs were abrogated by this “student.”

(Full disclosure here: I was a graduate student at Columbia from 1965 to 1971, also a time of campus riots, mainly in 1968. I was so busy with schoolwork that I couldn’t even think of protesting, or counter-protesting, anything or anyone — so much so that I gave up all sports and probably gained about 40 pounds. What are they doing at Columbia University nowadays? Don’t they keep their grad students busy anymore?)

The left is outraged at this supposed limitation on free speech and academic freedom.

Stated Ron Unz:

“For the last several generations, America’s elite academic institutions have been among the most prestigious in the world, drawing top students from across the globe and constituting a central pillar of our country’s soft power. ... Since World War II elite American universities have tended to attract the best and the brightest young men and women from around the world, thereby shaping the minds of so many future global leaders. So I suspect that these shocking news stories of harsh ideological crackdowns on academic freedom and sudden dramatic arrests by masked federal agents are already reverberating around the world, severely damaging one of the few remaining pillars of American geopolitical dominance.”

In the view of the Washington Post, “Opening the door to green card deportations endangers us.” Reason Magazine offers this gem: “Universities Should Challenge Trump’s Speech-Based Deportations of Students in Court. A lawsuit brought by universities could potentially be much more effective than leaving individual students to fend for themselves.”

Opined Truthout, “As ICE Jails Palestinian Protester, Universities Must Commit to Academic Freedom. Universities may sow their own demise if they continue to aid the suppression of pro-Palestine campus movements.”

Now, it cannot be denied that some of these commentators have also opposed restrictions on free speech emanating from the left. But for the most part, the radical campus faculty were entirely comfortable with — indeed, were and still are on the forefront of — efforts to quell the views of conservatives and libertarians.

They were adamant that the proper pronouns be employed. They went apoplectic when anyone used the word “negro” despite the fact that the United Negro College Fund has not seen fit to drop that appellation. They insisted that “people of color” be substituted for “colored people” (don’t ask), even though the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is still a going concern. They turned vicious whenever anyone referred to “Orientals,” and this in the face of the fact that many Chinese restaurants still use this word in their titles. And don’t even think about any mention of intelligence quotients; just ask Charles Murray (co-author of The Bell Curve) what kind of reception he received on college campuses. Canadian Jordan Peterson gave up his faculty position at the prestigious University of Toronto since he felt he couldn’t in good conscience enroll any white male as a student.

Then there was the requirement for hiring and promotion that a DIE (or DEI, “Didn’t Earn It”) form be submitted. And when they meant diversity, this had nothing to do with representation of different ideologies. Rather, it focused on pigment and internal plumbing. Black “Studies,” Queer “Studies,” Feminist “Studies,” Middle Eastern “Studies” (Israel bad, terrorists good) were the order of the day.

All throughout these outrages, there was a deathly silence emanating from the port side of the aisle at these blatant attacks on free speech and academic freedom. Indeed, the biased faculty was in the forefront of stamping out these and dozens of other instances of such occurrences. And now they have the audacity to bitterly complain when the shoe is on the other foot. For shame.

Donald Trump is now valiantly trying to clean out these academic Augean stables. Bless him. He threatened Columbia with the loss of almost half a billion in funding if they did not quell their wokist antisemitism. This was a bit unfair, since the culprits of the piece were largely located in the hard sciences and were in the main innocent of these maladies, mainly perpetrated by faculties in the humanities and social sciences. But all’s fair in war against intellectual cesspools.

A suggestion: Don’t worry about whether or not wokism is taught. If banned, the present professoriate will teach their Marxist drivel, cultural and economic, under different rubrics. Instead, inaugurate affirmative action for conservative and libertarian professors, and maintain it until scholars of this persuasion occupy at least 50% of all faculty positions.

I wonder how the governments of India, Syria, and South Korea, or any other, for that matter, would deal with an American student who enrolled in one of their universities and mixed studying with promoting protests against the policies of the government of the host country. Probably not very nicely.



Originally published here.