Free Speech has become politically incorrect.
To cut to the nitty gritty our constitution has become politically incorrect.
'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'
Our colleges for the most part are run by fearful liberal administrators. Quite cowardly.
Why Academic Leaders Are Afraid of Free Speech
'Of all of America’s great universities, the University of Chicago seems to have come the closest historically to getting this right. The school’s well-known 1967 Kalven Committee
report was, I believe, correct when it stated: “The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society. A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions.
By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.” Almost 50 years later, at the request of its President Robert Zimmer, The University of Chicago again articulated its position on “freedom of expression.” The short document quotes the historian and former Chicago president, Hanna Holborn Gray: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is made to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.” “In a word,” the report goes on, “the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.” Yet students may be signaling that their commitment to “community” values may take precedence over this core value that many administrators have seen as essential for truly great institutions of learning.
A physically safe environment is an absolutely necessary condition for heated debate over ideas. The university cannot tolerate violations of personal space, physical threats, sustained public interruptions of speakers, or verbal epithets directed toward specific students; that lies beyond the boundaries of academic freedom. That doesn’t mean, however, that a college or university should introduce policies that will curtail or chill debate, that adhere to the politically correct beliefs of the moment, or that let their leaders off the hook through capitulation to “demands” that stifle discourse and conversations about what a university education aims to produce.'
