I’m a Conservative College Student. The First Amendment Is Dying on Campuses Like Mine.

As a conservative columnist for my campus newspaper, it’s not unusual for me to be derided and accused of hate by leftist students.

Some have been calling for my firing ever since I started writing. I’m a mainstream conservative-libertarian. Apparently, that is beyond the pale.

Campuses are lively places, full of debate on political, social, and religious topics. But new ideological boundary lines have been drawn, and their crossing is met with reproach, accusations of hate, and even violence.

In March, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont was hospitalized after protesters disrupted a speech by the social scientist Charles Murray.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >>

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter also felt the wrath of campus extremism when threats of violence prompted the University of California, Berkeley to cancel her speech.

These events and others have marked the erosion of the free speech at colleges that were once lauded for their commitment to it. On today’s campuses, anyone with a remotely controversial idea comes under attack. Why?

Millennials seem to have a problem with free speech.

In a study by the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of millennials agreed that “the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups.”

The study found that today’s youth are much more likely than their parents and grandparents to support the suppression of controversial speech—a fact that young conservatives like me know all too well.

The hate mail, electronic diatribes, personal attacks, and threats I faced during my freshman year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst would make you think I’d done something horrible. In reality, all I’d done was write in The Collegian, the school paper—columns arguing against the sanctuary campus movement, safe spaces, political correctness, and overzealous cultural appropriation policies.

But what has fueled this hostility toward alternate ideas?

It’s simple: College campuses, once lively places of debate and controversy, have come under the tyranny of groupthink. In an age defined by diversity, we’ve left no space for differences that go deeper than the skin.

Some professors blatantly teach their opinion as fact and belittle the few students who don’t subscribe to their gospel of leftism.

The result? College classrooms that used to be places of robust conversation now cultivate a spirit of complacency. Institutions of higher education are complicit in fostering a culture of comfort—and in doing so, they are doing students a disservice.

The real world can be an ugly place where college graduates are regularly confronted by ideas they disagree with and things they find offensive.

College campuses are not that way. They’ve become “safe spaces,” where students are sheltered from the very expansion of their worldview that is meant to be the purpose of their education.

At Wellesley College, six professors suggested that the university set up a “censorship committee” in order to make sure that “guest speakers with controversial and objectionable beliefs” were barred from campus. In 2015, the president of Northwestern University, Morton Schapiro, took to The Washington Post to write that “we all deserve safe spaces.”

On my own campus, some professors responded to the election of Donald Trump by bringing therapy dogs to class and giving out free hugs. The desire to shield students from offense has stymied the debate that actually prepares them for life in the real world. http://dailysignal.com/2017/09/22/i...ent-first-amendment-dying-campuses-like-mine/ The article goes on to identify additional threats to free speech on a college campus and the way it is repressed. The kind of snowflake mentality group think and safe spaces that occur on campus are a threat to both free speech and intellectual curiosity. We need to restore balance and the free use of the 1st amendment on campus.

 

Yes, it's a sorry state of affairs. Have you written about it in the paper? Do you belong to any like-minded clubs?

 

Participation Trophy/Antifa/Safe-Space Nation doesn't seem to understand that the 1st Amendment wouldn't exist if everyone politely accepted everyone else's worldviews. It's wasn't penned and ratified to protect genteel, respectful and popular speech.

They also don't seem to understand that when you start applying sanctions to unpopular speech you start down the road to political prisons.

Buck up, buttercups.

 

If I am dropping $30K to be taught by professors, why should I have to listen to to a bunch of students whining?

 

Ya mean like the OP?

 

Sounds like the OP is whining because he can't find a "safe space" for his own opinions.

He needs to grow a pair and grow up.

Has it occurred to the OP that what he is encountering is just a microcosm of what happened to the Obama's?

Maybe this might give the OP some insight into what it is like to be on the receiving end and thus be more willing to reach out and find compromises that work for everyone and not just his "conservative" ideology?

 

It's always nice to be able to shut off anything you don't want to hear; to have the right to make others listen to you, but because they are wrong in your opinion you need not listen to them... Of course, that does not produce a balanced education- it produces a sort of arrogant ignorance.

Of course, that is not learning, that is cultivation of what you want to believe by exclusion of what you don't want to hear or consider. This why formal education is declining in value- it is producing an imbalance in perception, an inability to see a complete picture. It is teaching that you reach conclusions by eliminating conflicting points in order to reach the one you want- rather than consider it all and reaching the conclusions that are representative of facts.

The real school is real life. It's open to everyone 24/7. Some pay attention, some don't. But if you do, you can learn anything and everything you might ever want to know. Those who deem themselves involved in "Higher learning" usually don't understand how much they have missed.

 

We can start by defunding student loans, especially for "basket-weaving" degrees where students end up wearing a paper hat anyway. Suddenly liberal professors won't have anyone to brainwash.

Steve

 

Which begs the question as to who brainwashed the MAGA hat wearers?

 

I can't speak for others but I became a Trump supporter during the primaries when Chicago thugs successfully stopped Trump from his freedom of assembly and free speech rights, at a university campus no less. Would that be you?

Steve

 

I mean like everybody. If conservatives feel put upon today it is simply karma for decades of them trying to quash the counterculture and environmental movements on campuses over the years, that then moved to anal conservative movements to stamp out them partying, pre-marital sex having greek organizations. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. This is just another step down that slippery slope they started.

 

As you imply, this mentality and push, while averred to be otherwise, is designed to dampen free speech and intellectual curiosity. I wish I did, but I have no idea how to turn the tide.

 

I find it ironic that no one here seems to be upset about the President's comment last night about the free speech of professional football players...when it happens to someone you support you are a victim when it happens to someone you don't, it's justice?

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out – he’s fired. He’s fired!’ ” Donald Trump 9/22/2017

 

Interesting OP.

I think we'll be examining why leftists embraced an anti-free speech movement for decades to come. There has been a drastic change in political roles for years now, causing most people to question how and why we assign political labels.

Take liberals/progressives/socialists, for example. There is very little that can be considered 'liberal' when examining the political will of these people; they hate change, are desperate to fit in with their peers and are strong believers in government controlled speech.

The OP's article could have been written in the 1950s by a 'liberal' railing against the conservative establishment. Anyone who doesn't tow the line of leftist dogma, for example, is shunned by both peers and administrators alike. If someone dares to question existing social mores they are questioned about their loyalty to the cause, about their commitment to the movement.

Diversity of thought is frowned upon.

And now this intellectual cowardliness is taking hold outside university campuses. Twitter and Facebook has allowed leftists to conduct purity tests, where heretics who voice unaccepted opinions feel the lash of committed leftists.

It's truly fascinating. Fortunately, normal Americans, our constitution and free elections have allowed for a stop to all the left wing nuttery. Democrats have lost almost 1,000 state and federal legislative seats since 2008. The left has lost control of most of the state governorships, state legislatures and congress.

And there is no reason, with whack jobs such as Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris waiting in the wings to assume Democratic Party leadership from the fossilized Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, to expect anything will change in the 2018 and 2020 elections. (And what is with a Democratic Party led by old women? Harris is one of only a few of the party leaders that wouldn't be eligible for an AARP membership.)

So great post, OP. Keep up the fight against the entrenched, stagnant belief system of a failed, corrupt movement.

 

I was in college Republicans the year Reagan was elected 1980. It was totally different then compared to now.

 

I asked about clubs for one reason. That us to organize letter writing campaigns. Someone might research who the big donors are; then flood them with letters that describe the situation.

 

Too many donors particularly in the tech industry like google, face book, etc. actually support what is happening there and do likewise in their on line domains.

 

too bad you can't revisit the title of your thread. Whatever the value of your argument may be. It has little to do with the first amendment protections provided from government harassment of the press, the banning of assembly, and or its censorship of speech. What you object to is a lack of respect for diverse viewpoints on college campuses, and that beef is legit.

 

We generally believed that the first amendment applied to all, but obviously it doesn't. And that's my own personal biggest pet peeve with this country: There's nothing united about it. It's not united in law or spirit, or even principle. We're all a collection of individuals, with individual views trying to shape this country. To add to this, in our simplicity we have chosen two political parties(and only two) for which to express our "viewpoint", which isn't even ours anymore but it's Fox News's, or MSNBC's, etc.

A country is only as viable as its politics, and our politics right now is not viable or healthy.

 

You were wrong. It applies only to government efforts to silence, ban or punish speech, not to millennials, students or even professor's efforts to discourage or silence speech or who do not fully grasp the value of access to intellectually diverse viewpoints.

 

nothing has ever mattered less than how upset you are that people don't like your opinions. this post is entirely you complaining that people are saying things about what you have to say that you don't like.

 

$ 30K is a whole lot of money to be indoctrinated by college professors in political correctness.

At UCLA if you want to learn how to disrupt a speech being given Ann Coulter you take 3C. Ordinary Differential Equations with Linear Algebra for Life Sciences. It's a 4 unit class.

 

I’m a Conservative College Student. The First Amendment Is Dying on Campuses Like Mine.

No, fascism, hate and prejudice is being exposed. The Nazis and Confederates are not conservative. Trump was exposed for his racism, when he tried to defend them in Charlottesville Va.

 

O the mountains of irony. Hundreds, tens of thousands of nonleftists in the workplace are effectively stifled, subject to harassment and threats, penalized in their careers and commercially, subject to discriminatory treatment in the workplace every day, especially in places like gov-edu (see OP), but also in the private sector, yet when it comes around and bites the other side in the butt, it's a travesty against free speech. Tell us another one.

Trump's comments on private sector matters -are- wrong, the POTUS should not jawbone the private sector like that. But Obama made it fashionable for a POTUS to comment on private sector and state matters especially during all the BLM shenanigans of the last couple of years, so when Trump does it, it's also wrong, but understandable backlash.

 

Well the bill of rights was extended to cover the states after the civil war and many colleges are state operated institutions of higher education. So, university's and their professors acting as proxies for their state should not be allowed to discriminate against students or their free speech viewpoints.