Arizona State University must be rolling in the glory of this wisdom, imparted by two ASU profs who’ve started a discussion about why Free Speech on Campus is not just overrated but dangerous. My First thought? Their sort of speech sounds dangerous, but they got to say it.
Our contention is that calls for greater freedom of speech on campuses, however well-intentioned, risk undermining colleges’ central purpose, namely, the production of expert knowledge and understanding, in the sense of disciplinarily warranted opinion.
These must be really smart people who, presumably, questioned nothing as they climbed the educational ladder of success, making the best means for passing accumulated groupthink to future generations. Unfortunately, someone has to decide. Which groupthink? There are thousands of campuses with many more thousands of experts. Not all of them agree on much of everything, and some don’t agree on anything, let alone whose expertise will define “expert knowledge.”
The ASU authors try to get around this trip wire by being who they are: Pompous, navel-gazing, self-absorbed pr!cks.
Expertise requires freedom of speech, but it is the result of a process of winnowing and refinement that is premised on the understanding that not all opinions are equally valid. Efforts to “democratize” opinion are antithetical to the role colleges play in educating the public and informing democratic debate. We urge administrators toward caution before uncritically endorsing calls for intellectual diversity in place of academic expertise…
And Suddenly diversity is bad, and again, whose bad? Which bright lights are the ones into which we must walk? No one will agree, and if you don’t lead with the BIPOC community or the coalition of Left-Handed Albino Lesbian Scholars, many of whom will also not agree, you are begging for an “idea- illogical” civil war.
Violence is, of course, inevitable because what you seek, like everything else cast out of the progressive void, is impossible.
Free speech and vigorous debate is simply the best answer because the alternative is, well – this. A police power that compartmentalizes words, ideas, and thoughts that would not stop at the edge of campus. Nothing that intellectuals think on a college campus stays there, leading to a nation in which the people who thought up the idea (starting with two ASU professors) are not permitted to think or speak themselves.
Policing generations of mindless matriculators will only lead to the notion that free speech is antithetical to democracy and the Republic and that it should be prevented as quickly and as painfully as possible.
That is the trap.
As with any progressive policy, advocates assume they’ll always control the power behind it or that the power will tolerate them as if it owes them something, and that is never how it ends. We all end up against the wall, and it often starts with two idiots who are so smart they are stupid.
HT | HotAir
