Free Speech on Campus

[Fozzz 152]

Well, what do you know?

Quote

But a brand new data analysis from Georgetown University’s Free Speech Project suggests that this “crisis” is more than a little overblown. There have been relatively few incidents of speech being squelched on college campuses, and there’s in fact limited evidence that conservatives are being unfairly targeted.

The Free Speech Project’s researchers have cataloged more than 90 incidents since 2016 that fit their criteria for a person’s free speech rights being threatened. Of those 90, about two-thirds took place on college campuses. These incidents range from a speaker being disinvited to a faculty member being fired over allegedly offensive comments to a student-run play being canceled over concerns it would offend.

The raw numbers here should already raise questions about the so-called political correctness epidemic. According to the Department of Education, there are 4,583 colleges and universities in the United States (including two- and four-year institutions). The fact that there were roughly only 60 incidents in the past two years suggests that free speech crises are extremely rare events and don’t define university life in the way that critics suggest.

Moreover, there’s a consistent pattern in the data when it comes to conservatives — one that tells a different story than you hear among free speech panickers.

“Most of the incidents where presumptively conservative speech has been interrupted or squelched in the last two or three years seem to involve the same few speakers: Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter ,” Sanford Ungar, the Free Speech Project’s director, writes. “In some instances, they seem to invite, and delight in, disruption.”

What Ungar is suggesting here is that the “campus free speech” crisis is somewhat manufactured. Conservative student groups invite speakers famous for offensive and racially charged speech — all of the above speakers fit that bill — in a deliberate attempt to provoke the campus left. In other words, they’re trolling. When students react by protesting or disrupting the event, the conservatives use it as proof that there’s real intolerance for conservative ideas.

The other key thing that emerges from the Georgetown data, according to Ungar, is that these protests and disruptions don’t just target the right. “Our data also include many incidents, generally less well-publicized, where lower-profile scholars, speakers, or students who could be considered to be on the left have been silenced or shut down,” he writes.

Examples include Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s commencement speech being canceled after receiving death threats for criticizing President Donald Trump and the president of Sonoma State University apologizing for allowing a black student to read a poem critical of police violence at commencement.

There’s little reason, according to Ungar, to conclude from any of this that conservative views are uniquely unwelcome on campus.

“One among many untested concepts,” he writes, “is whether the survey results would be different if conservative student groups, instead of repeatedly inviting campus visitors who have built a brand of disruption, were to sponsor serious intellectual dialogue with thinkers on the right.”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/political-correctness-free-speech-liberal-data-georgetown

I can't wait for Bari Weiss to completely ignore this study in her next NYT column.  

[Js1 85095]

Oh great, the right wingers will be here shortly to tell us how wrong this is.  Paging Slorch, Onboard and EMAWesome

[TornACL 7675]

13 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Oh great, the right wingers will be here shortly to tell us how wrong this is.  Paging Slorch, Onboard and EMAWesome

Maybe it would help their perspective if any of those people had, y'know, actually stepped foot on a college campus once in their lives.