No university student has the right to be safe from uncomfortable ideas, only from physical threats, and any student who claims to be in physical fear of politically incorrect ideas does not belong at a university. The most extreme example of this distortion of the role of higher education took place at my own university when a distinguished dean of a Harvard residential college was fired from his deanship because some “woke” students claimed to feel unsafe in his presence because he was representing, as a defense lawyer, a man accused of rape.
Alan M. Dershowitz
August 31, 2019
The Dangerous Stalinism of the “Woke” Hard-Left
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I was shocked when I first heard about safe spaces on campus a couple of years ago, although I probably should not have been since even in the 60s leftist of the time (SDS and others) protested a fire insurance conference on campus because some of the investigators attending were carrying on campus. Police were ‘pigs’ then, and the leftist did not want them around because they did not feel safe.
Still, the whole idea of safe spaces on campus is an oxymoron. Most of the student body and faculty in the 60s and 70s would have flat out said ‘no way’. That’s not part of a liberal education. The leftist today are just snowflakes, but they are intent on destroying western civilization along with us.
I beg to differ with the Dersh, in a minor but very important way.
You don’t have the right to be safe from physical threats.
You do, however, have the right to provide for your own defense against physical threats, in whatever manner is both sufficient and necessary.
Kurt
You should also be entitled to expect the government to enforce criminal laws against offenders, which doesn’t mean it protects you from their physical threats but removes them from society if they do, and indirectly deters such actions to some extent.
Arguably it isn’t necessary to have such a government service, but it is a popular justification for the existence of government, and while it does, it should be expected to deliver.
If to operate a university as a business, the student is of more value than a dean or any professor, simply because a student’s tuition, a source of income to the university, is at stake, the making of a charitable alumni comes after. The university/business may care little or nothing of one’s civil rights. To that end, a university considers civil rights only to the degree that the fedgov requires.
Yet, the actions of a university may place in jeopardy the monies it receives from the fedgov, that is, the taxpayers since it is morally wrong for the taxpayer to be forced to fund those opinions and beliefs they may think reprehensible.
While a university run as a business may act entirely within the law, in the legal sense, it still can be morally and ethically deficient. To place snowflake students above the dean is reprehensible. This is doubly so when the supposedly objectionable behavior of the dean were not associated with the university.
I’m fairly positive that the students think they’ve won this battle. Yet, as employer I would be asking all new hires if they were enrolled during those years of the ‘culture wars’. If so, offer of employment is rescinded and they will be escorted of the property tout d’suite. I see enhanced OTJ employer-sponsored programs coming back in style for such have universities become incubation farms of jackassery.