On college campuses across the United States, we have seen protests of all sorts from students who want to fight against hate speech and remove certain opinions from campus. The creation of safe spaces and other opinion filters have become so rampant that President Barack Obama stated in a speech, “I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”
Some college students and faculty have gone beyond speaking out against hate speech and have taken disciplinary action against people who cause offense. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has documented many occurrences of these incidents.
Unfortunately, it has gotten to the point where certain opinions have been painted as racist or sexist, when in fact they are valid arguments that should be refuted or proven accordingly. The end result is that some conversations cannot take place on some college campuses because one side is scared to speak up under threat of suspension or other punishments.
For this reason, informed people who have developed arguments against some mainstream ideas on college campuses have been silenced or turned away because their ideas are “dangerous.” From dis-invitation campaigns to yelling down speakers, the ability to allow individuals to judge the opinions of others for themselves in a calm and civilized fashion is under attack.
For example, Ray Kelly was set to give a lecture on “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City” at Brown University in 2013. Protesters interrupted the lecture and would not yield the floor until it was canceled. As a result, members of the audience were stripped of the opportunity to evaluate Kelly’s arguments for themselves.
Similarly, when Christina Sommers spoke at Georgetown University on the disconnect between equality and feminism, she was accused of hate speech and of being a rape apologist. After watching her lecture, I can say confidently that I think these accusations are extraordinarily false.
This college culture of intolerance toward diverse opinions stems from political correctness. I’m not talking about just being nice to people; political correctness, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” In this way, political correctness is a social mechanism by which people are compelled to self-censor in order to avoid offending the socially disadvantaged. Being socially disadvantaged is distinctly different from being legally or politically disadvantaged, which are conditions imposed on people by unequal government. Free speech is a guarantee that politicized expression cannot be legally restricted, and in normal societies, the only entity really capable of retaliating against politicized speech is government by way of coercion. Because social issues are usually considered to be non-political, interpersonal interactions, the politically correct culture has been able to socially compel institutionalized censorship of various forms of expression.
The slogan, “the personal is political,” sums it up. Certain groups have somehow collectivized interpersonal interactions between individuals, thus imposing power struggles on even the most mundane actions, often between people who differ by some physical trait. Every interaction is now a power struggle between two groups of people. For example, a study from Northeastern University-Boston, “Smiles, word choice show what type of sexism men display,” determined that even a smile can be considered sexist.
This collectivist culture of self-censorship relies heavily on the individual’s choice to suppress his or her own arguments by reacting to accusations of abuse with shame and acceptance. Relying on people to self-censor is ineffective, which is why so many political correctness advocacy groups have been pulling in college administrations to help police against upsetting speech. As previously mentioned, counter-arguments, like those offered by Sommers, to the positions of these groups have been labeled as hateful in an attempt to shut down conversations and avoid debates. This is a serious threat to free speech on college campuses.
Hate speech is unwanted and should be socially denounced, but we must also protect the free speech of everyone, not just those people with whom we agree. Protesting for a cause is both effective and empowering, but shutting down conversations and silencing opposition is counterproductive. Removing opinions from campus doesn’t help progress; it only creates an echo chamber.