Tag: thought crime

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Freedom vs. Force at Harvard

Harvard, censorship, cancel culture, freedom of thought

Things haven’t been going well for freedom of expression on campus.

Institutions of higher learning where foes of free speech flourish include purported bastions of intellectual discourse like Harvard University. In 2022, Harvard ranked 170th out of 203 schools with respect to free speech on campus in an assessment by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

According to a 2023 College Pulse survey, 26 percent of Harvard students say it’s sometimes okay to use violence to stop speech on campus. Only 27 percent say it’s always wrong to shout down a speaker.

“Many, many people are being threatened with — and actually put through —  disciplinary processes for their exercise of free speech and academic freedom,” says Janet Halley, of Harvard Law School. “Many people think that they’re entitled not to be offended.”

Jeffrey Flier, medical school professor, says free speech has been in decline at Harvard at least since 2007.

Halley, Flier, and more than 100 other Harvard faculty members have newly formed the Council on Academic Freedom.

Flier says it’s been too hard for professors to simply “[put] their head above the parapet [and say] ‘I think this is wrong.’ There hasn’t been any network of people from across the spectrum that could be able to do this. But that’s what we now have in the council.”

The Council seems to be off to a good start. Now let us see how many of the rest of the school’s 2,400 or so faculty members join up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Riddle Us That

thought crime, blacklist, pc culture

“Riddle me this,” William Rainford tweeted during the big national #MeToo civil war over the Senate’s confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Why would the accuser of Kavanaugh take a polygraph, paid for by someone else and administered by private investigator in early August, if she wanted to remain anonymous and had no intention of reporting the alleged assault?”

Dr. Rainford, Dean of the National Catholic School of Social Service at the Catholic University of America, was on a roll.

“Swetnick is 55 y/​o. Kavanaugh is 52 y/​o,” began a now-​removed tweet about another accuser. “Since when do senior girls hang with freshmen boys? If it happened when Kavanaugh was a senior, Swetnick was an adult drinking with&by her admission, having sex with underage boys. In another universe, he would be victim & she the perp!”

Interesting questions. But for students at his university, enraging. Some were angered enough to walk out of class and demand his resignation.

Rainford was suspended and last week resigned as Dean.

Back in September, Will Rainford profusely expressed his contrition in a Cultural Revolution-​style statement: “My tweet suggested that [Julie Swetnick] was not a victim of sexual assault. I offer no excuse. It was impulsive and thoughtless and I apologize.”

Strange, then, that media coverage of this case fails to even mention that Swetnick and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, have now been referred to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution for making allegedly false statements to Congress.

Swetnick and Avenatti can, however, expect to receive better treatment than an administrator in an establishment of higher education who dares ask unpopular questions that trigger progressives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

N.B. This edition of Common Sense is condensed from last weekend’s Townhall column by Paul Jacob.

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