Posted on 11/25/2022 5:49:52 AM PST by karpov
Jumping to conclusions is sometimes a big mistake. I recently became puzzled and mildly infuriated when I read that Stanford University was going to have a conference on freedom of expression and academic freedom—but was admitting only invitees, allowing no press or other interested persons to attend. That sounded like limiting expression and dissent to me.
Then I read the news accounts further and realized that Stanford’s graduate business school was making a prudent decision.
More specifically, the school’s Classical Liberal Initiative was inviting a blue-chip group of serious scholars, entrepreneurs, and free-speech activists for what looked like a stellar conference. It aimed “to identify ways to restore academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech and expression on campus and in the larger culture.”
The inclusion of entrepreneur Peter Thiel, coauthor of The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus, set the tone for the conference. Heavyweight scholars included, among others, Penn attorney Amy Wax, George Mason economist Tyler Cowen, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, Stanford historian Niall Ferguson and physician Jay Bhattacharya, and NYU climate scientist Steve Koonin.
Free-speech activists included Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression; NYU’s Jonathan Haidt, co-founder of the Heterodox Academy; and Nadine Strossen, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union. Prominent victims of successful efforts to suppress legitimate expression were there, too—for example, former Princeton classics scholar Joshua Katz and former Georgetown law professor Ilya Shapiro.
All in all, this was a group of very distinguished individuals whose only offense, as far as I could see, is that they are all outspoken and (in many cases) have views inconsistent with the dominant woke ideology dominating the tonier colleges and universities.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Trigglypuff Rule.
Freedom of speech is for everyone, no just college elites.
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