We keep hearing how students and professors are being targeted for saying stuff they’re not supposed to say — from the perspective of the hard-left students, professors, and off-campus third parties who launch most of the attacks, that is.
Which seem to be happening more and more often.
The numbers confirm it. New research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) indicates that attacks on professors for impolitic speech have increased since 2015. Most of the attacks — 74 percent — have resulted in sanctions against the accused.
According to FIRE, “calls for sanction” of a professor rose from 24 in 2015 to 113 in 2020.
Three fourths of the tallied incidents, 314 out of 426, have led to punishments like suspension or termination.
The attacks tend to occur on university campuses with “severely speech-restrictive” policies. Like many Ivy League schools.
One of the researchers, Komi German, says that university administrators and presidents must “explicitly state that the protection of free speech and academic inquiry supersedes protection from words that are perceived as offensive.”
Good idea. Let them do that.
Why aren’t the censorious administrators doing it already, though?
Probably because they lack allegiance to the value of freedom of speech on campus.
Until these academics all have Damascus-level conversions, parents and students must do what they can themselves to discourage these censorious policies. This means, abstaining from attending and paying tuition at schools that penalize professors and others for wrongspeech.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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