ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Ann Coulter is the most recent victim of the tyranny of thugs on college campuses.
Full disclosure: I don’t like anything about Ann Coulter. Her act is cheap. It gets attention by being offensive and hostile. The Ann Coulter brand persists and thrives by appealing to what is least attractive in human beings.
OK, so I don’t like anything about Ann Coulter. Nevertheless, I object to the fact that when she was invited to speak at Berkeley, she was shut down by thugs.
Her talk was cancelled when school officials said that, given the “controversy” (read “threats of violence”), they could not adequately secure the site. Although the university tried to reschedule, security concerns caused several sponsoring groups to pull out, and Coulter never returned.
Coulter’s cancellation was another victory for the mobs that increasingly control who and what may be heard on American college campuses. It is the latest in a long series of blows against intellectual freedom and freedom of speech. Each successful silencing of speakers by campus rioters pounds another nail in the coffin of public civility.
The word “university” once evoked a vision of scholar’s paradise. Acceptance to college was a ticket to the intellectually stimulating world of learning. At college one studied great thinkers, and discovered challenging ideas and new points of view. University was a place of intense engagement and cool reflection, in a world that valued critical thinking and intellectual discourse. Argument was an art, conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect, which required listening no less than speaking.
That university is rapidly disappearing. It is drowning in shouts and threats of violence by loudmouth aggressives on one hand and by “weak” victim-players on the other, who demand protection from ideas that might cause them discomfort.
“Disinvitations” for college speakers are on the rise. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting civil rights in higher education, tracks “disinvitations” and posts them on their website database. The long list of invited speakers shut down by campus thugs in the 2015-16 academic year include the following individuals:
• Nicholas Dirk – The Chancellor of the University of Berkeley was unable to hold his scheduled public meeting on his own campus! Protesters shouted and chanted over him until he stopped speaking. Their complaint? He wasn’t doing enough for black students and his salary was too high.
• Janet Mock – The transgender rights activist and TV host was unable to speak as scheduled at Brown University. The mob allegedly didn’t mind the content of the talk, but objected to it being co-sponsored by Hillel, a Jewish student organization.
• Jason Riley – The Wall Street Journal columnist was disinvited from Virginia Tech due to “controversy” because he had written about race issues. Apparently some bullies objected to the fact that Riley, who is black, is the author of a 2014 book called “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed”.
• Bassem Eid – The Palestinian political analyst and human rights advocate was speaking at the University of Chicago where he was shouted down repeatedly and ultimately shut down by protesters who judged his comments to be insufficiently anti-Israel.
Sadly, there are many more such incidents listed on FIRE’s website, and the numbers continue to grow.
University officials are too weak and unmotivated to evict rude protesters. Where is their commitment to intellectual freedom? What values do today’s universities stand for?
The University of Chicago’s welcoming letter to the incoming freshman class last fall noted its commitment to free inquiry and free expression, but not the freedom to harass and threaten others. The letter famously said, “”Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ’trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ’safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
More universities need to take this position, and back it up with adequate security for the speakers and muscular sanctions against those who interfere with the program.
As much as I don’t like Ann Coulter, she can count on me to be on her side against the thugs and bullies – and their institutional enablers – who shut her up.
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