However, when campus speech codes go beyond the Hillsdale model, they reduce higher education to nothing more than a robotic assembly line cranking out prefabricated ideas in a factory of left-wing political correctness. Today, the speech codes on most of America's campuses are nothing more than carefully-designed thought-control mechanisms, created by America's "progressive" social engineers, for turning today's college students into mindless, soulless, left-thinking automatons.......
by Hans Zeiger
For a generation, America's vast system of higher education has become known for its increasing intolerance of free speech when it comes to conservative ideas. Fortunately, the stifling of expression and dialogue on America's university and college campuses may be in its final days.
Recently, both a federal court and the Bush Administration have upheld the First Amendment and denounced university and college policies that prohibit expression perceived as "insensitive" or "hurtful."
First, U.S District Court Judge John E. Jones III recently ruled that Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania must end enforcement of its oppressive speech code. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education sued Shippensburg earlier in the year because the university's code states that "commitment to racial tolerance, cultural diversity, and social justice will require every member of this community to ensure that the principles of these ideals be mirrored in their attitudes and behaviors."
In other words, Shippensburg students are required to drench themselves in left-wing radicalism and act and talk just like left-wing radicals do. Hopefully after this federal ruling, some bit of decency (and sanity) will return to Shippensburg.
Second, a letter was sent last month from the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights to America's college and university administrators, clarifying that "OCR's regulations and policies do not require or prescribe speech, conduct, or harassment codes that impair the exercise of rights protected under the First Amendment." This statement reverses years of federally required violation of the First Amendment.
In particular, under the Clinton Administration, leftist control of expression and thought in higher education became a federally-prescribed institutionalized practise. In the 1990s, the OCR required universities to impose and enforce rigorous "speech codes" (attempting to regulate the attitudes, words and behavior of students in violation of their First Amendment rights) in order to receive federal funding.
Today, it is estimated that 90 percent of America's institutions of higher education have adopted a "speech code" of some form.
Campus administrations claim that the purpose of their speech codes is to protect certain groups who are vulnerable to harassment and discrimination. Yet too often, these codes are used as a means to censor the expression of non-leftist ideas. For example, at the University of New Hampshire, the speech code bans "ongoing and unproductive culturally based arguments between roommates" and "disagreements between floor members over 'political' material posted on their room doors."
Florida Tech bans any "use of threatening words or actions that are likely to, or do in fact, cause emotional distress."
The University of Maryland policy gives no leeway for "idle chatter of a sexual nature, sexual innuendoes, comments about a person's clothing, body, and/or sexual activities, comments of a sexual nature about weight, body shape, size, or figure, and comments or questions about the sensuality of a person." As George Mason University Professor David Bernstein points out, simply complementing a person on their choice of clothing could be considered an offense at University of Maryland.
Writing for the Washington Times, Bucknell University junior Charles Mitchell claims that his school's Campus Court has created and applied a "right to feel comfortable." Mitchell continues, "That policy makes me feel very uncomfortable, but, because of my political views, my sensitivities are given no standing whatsoever at Bucknell."
"Diversity" (as defined by the left) is the value most esteemed above all others on the mainstream campus of 2003 -- diversity of culture, morality, skin color, sexuality, and so on. Yet, in actual fact, diversity -- as defined by the left -- is a very narrow concept. Students and professors who are conservative, Christian, straight, white or male are not considered diverse enough these days.
So when it comes to the diversity that matters -- intellectual diversity (diversity in thought) -- only the left is allowed to speak.
Multicultural Big Brother (in the Orwellian sense).
Granted, there is a need for codes of behavior on college campuses, but high standards can exist without destroying the free exchange of ideas. For example, conservative Hillsdale College includes a simple policy in its code prohibiting "disorderly, lewd, indecent or obscene expression on college-owned or controlled property or at college-sponsored or supervised functions."
However, when campus speech codes go beyond the Hillsdale model, they reduce higher education to nothing more than a robotic assembly line cranking out prefabricated ideas in a factory of left-wing political correctness. Today, the speech codes on most of America's campuses are nothing more than carefully-designed thought-control mechanisms, created by America's "progressive" social engineers, for turning today's college students into mindless, soulless, left-thinking automatons.
Fortunately, Judge John Jones and the Bush Administration have had enough sense to uphold the First Amendment and demand an end to speech codes. It is time for colleges and universities to get serious about reopening higher education as the marketplace of ideas.
Hans Zeiger is a Seattle Times columnist and conservative activist. As an 18-year old Eagle Scout, he is president of the Scout Honor Coalition and a student at Hillsdale College in Michigan. He can be contacted at
hazeiger@hillsdale.edu.
Great article! However, the author's youth results in a timidity that is the very reason why the totalitarians have come to rule campuses. He ends with advocacy of a "marketplace of ideas!" The totalitarianism of the multicultural left must be extirpated and removed from the marketplace forever, for the sake of humanity. The PC Left has revealed for the world why there can never be compromise with them.
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things aren't as bad as they might seem to the outsider. the average college student is very well aware of BS and PC crapola when they see and hear it. they play the role until they graduate, then they reemerge as themselves again.
I really doubt that very many college students (adults inthei rown rights) have opinion changes as a result of some class they only have for three months.
at least that is what I have seen after 18 years in acedemia