Posted on 03/15/2017 1:38:17 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Bias Response Teams Chill Free Speech and Miseducate Students MAR 15, 2017George Leef1 Comment In their Atlantic article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukainoff identified a troubling development on American campuses. They wrote, “A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.”
Instead of confronting statements, beliefs, and arguments that they dislike or don’t agree with, more and more students insist on avoiding them or, worse, trying to silence those who speak them. Students, along with accomplices on the faculty and in administration, have been successful in keeping outsiders from giving lectures because they don’t want to give a platform to anyone who holds views that clash with theirs.
The justification usually given is that presentation of “controversial” ideas would be too upsetting and must be suppressed. The latest example is the ugly, violent reaction at Middlebury College on March 2 when a mob prevented Charles Murray from giving a talk and later injured Professor Allison Stanger as she and Murray were trying to leave campus in a car.
At least, such incidents make news.
What seldom makes news, however, is another aspect of the suppression of speech—bias response teams (BRTs). Quite a number of colleges and universities have established them, at least 232 according to a new report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and that number is believed to be rapidly growing.
When a college or university sets up a BRT, it establishes a formal process for soliciting reports from students, faculty, or staff about allegedly offensive speech or conduct. The team responds to complaints. That’s where the trouble begins, because the complaints usually involve speech that is protected under the First Amendment.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
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