Admin can protect campus life from disruptions in public spaces designed for all. One should not need to participate one way or the other to be free to share those spaces, and that’s not happening according to many complaints.

I respect any university’s desire to foster exchanges of ideas. One thing that immediately struck me about the lady interviewee - her absolute statement that the full spectrum of points of view should be allowed an airing. We should not tolerate that as a threat to campus safety. My question is, was she front and center with that same point during the many examples in recent years of conservative voices being canceled, or shouted over, with complaints that such speech made the protesting students feel unsafe? I don’t think so - not that I could find publicly.

That is a double standard in academia imo. See, I don’t think we should be treating students like kids at a dinner table. But…the flip side is academia should also be less quick to coddle kids complaining they’re “threatened” by different points of view.

So I don’t find the male prof’s desire to engage protestors to be comical. In fact I think that’s the way to educate our kids. But they must be required to remain civil, face penalties if they break rules or engage in harassment themselves, and for God’s sake, they can’t run people off campus because they don’t agree with them.

Too many of the same people complaining about shutting down protests (which violate school rules) were wholeheartedly on board with shutting down speakers they didn’t like (who were not violating campus rules and were often there by invitation).

It’s an across the spectrum problem - free speech too often means I’m free to say what I want and I’m free to squash speech I don’t want to hear.

[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 04/24/2024 1:26PM]