Williams College Students Don’t Want Free Speech

Students at Williams College were not happy about their college considering adopting pro-free speech principles, known as the “Chicago Principles.”

According to Inside Higher Ed, “The growing support for the principles is due in part to a promotional campaign by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties watchdog group. Those who disagree with basing policies on the Chicago principles don’t dispute the importance of free expression, especially in academe. But these critics say that reliance on the principles alone can ignore the role of a college in promoting inclusivity and diversity.”

This is a false dichotomy, of course, since true inclusivity demands the protections of free speech.  But apparently, the college’s consideration has caused many of the students to absolutely lose their minds.  Students formed a group called the Coalition Against Racist Education Now, or CARE, and they wrote the following rebuttal, along with snarky comments inserted by David Bernstein over at Instapundit:

In their rebuttal, the students, who called themselves the Coalition Against Racist Education Now, or CARE, wrote that the faculty petition “prioritizes the protection of ideas over the protection of people  [because ideas come from animals? plants?] and fails to recognize that behind every idea is a person with a particular subjectivity [what?]. Our beliefs, and the consequences of our actions, are choices we make [umm, no, many consequences of our actions are unintended and unpredictable]. Any claim to the ‘protection of ideas’ that is not founded in the insurance [assurance?] of people’s safety [you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means] poses a real threat — one which targets most pointedly marginalized people. An ideology of free speech absolutism that prioritizes ideas over people [again: because ideas come from animals? plants?], giving ‘deeply offensive’ language a platform at this institution, will inevitably imperil marginalized students.”

Then Bernstein added, “A greater threat to these students’ future than the imagined threat from having the occasional ‘offensive’ (read: conservative?) speaker on campus is that they are going to one of the best colleges in the United States, where tuition costs almost $57k a year plus room and board, and yet can’t competently write and edit several sentences of argument.”

Exactly.  I hope Williams College does adapt these principles, but this incident reveals that higher learning is rapidly becoming simply an indoctrination factory.  Nothing more, nothing less.  The faster parents recognize this truth, the better.

Hat Tip: Inside Higher Ed

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Image Credit: on Flicker, Williams College