Political Correctness Proves Poisonous

In 2013, Hampshire College disinvited an Afrobeat band, stating that their presence would not be “safe and healthy” because of the prevalence of white people in the group. In 2014, an abortion debate scheduled to occur at Oxford University’s Christ Church college was cancelled due to fears that it would endanger the “welfare and safety” of students. In 2016, dangerous protests involving firebombs and commercial-grade fireworks arose in response to a scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right political commentator, at the University of California, Berkeley. These incidents are not isolated rarities, but disturbing indicators of broad shifts underway in academic culture. The hypersensitivity overwhelming many college campuses has bred a chilling, stifling atmosphere of paranoia, self-consciousness and close-mindedness. Now, the paradigmatic qualities of education - engagement in rigorous intellectual discourse, entertainment of multiple perspectives and formulation of challenges to another’s thoughts - are subordinated to the cause of avoiding emotional discomfort.

Similar issues have emerged in the past, namely in the Antebellum South, a period spanning the late eighteenth century to the start of the American Civil War. During this period, honor culture reigned supreme, under which individuals fiercely protected their reputations, oftentimes through violent means. For example, gentlemen would frequently challenge newspaper editors to duels if unfavorable depictions of them were published, or simply attack them with canes and whips. Honor culture infiltrated universities as well, as instances of expelled students brutalizing professors who criticized them for their expulsion exist. Although today’s students are not inflamed by similar offenses, several crucial similarities exist between the honor culture of the Antebellum South and the stifling social justice culture of modern American academics.

At the crux of both cultures is the notion that offensive speech is a form of violence. To those who perceive themselves as victims of such violence, physical outlashes intended to silence the speaker are a method of self-defense. This is an incredibly dangerous belief. Every individual’s response to the circumstances which befall them is a subjective interpretation. If physical violence is justifiable whenever speech is presented that is irreconcilable and offensive to the listener’s worldview, there is little discernible purpose in attending an institution of higher education. Equally troubling is the implication of this action: college students are not capable of briefly entertaining a stance unlike their own, much less investigating and deconstructing the root causes of such a belief in order to foster true social change. Ultimately, silencing another’s opinion because it is unlike one’s own does not result in social progress. Rather, such acts of silencing cast the sincerity of protestors’ commitment to social activism in an extremely questionable light, as many students appear predominantly concerned with signaling their goodness through empty semantics and theatrical acts of violence.

The religiosity assigned to emotional comfort amongst students has, ironically enough, fostered emotional turbulence and fear in college professors. The power enjoyed by students over the professional fates of their professors is heightened by oversaturation in the academic job market. Adjunct professors face particularly precarious situations, as demonstrated by an individual whose contract was not renewed following complaints from his students. Such complaints circulated around the “inappropriate” nature of the Mark Twain and Edward Said texts he exposed them to. When the adjunct defended himself by asserting that the texts were intended to be uncomfortable, the rage of his students intensified, their emotions effectively suffocating all attempts at discourse over the actions of the adjunct. In another instance, two female professors of library sciences publicly humiliated a male colleague for alleged inappropriate and off-putting behavior. The professors claimed that, as they were victims of harassment, their accusation did not require proof to validify it. Solely focusing on identity eliminates a situation’s nuance, as in the aforementioned example, where the identity of the victims superseded the identity of the perpetrator. Such a culture of moral sensitivity, which encourages punishment for subjects of accusations and perpetrators of microaggressions, is not compatible with the honest inquiry and communication from which genuine academia springs.

These issues are resolvable, so long as students restore their allegiance to Liberal Science. In the 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors, Jonathan Raunch argues that free speech is not conducive to violence, but rather its very antithesis. Raunch identifies free speech as a central tenet of Liberal Science, an intellectual system which asserts that arguments are never definitively over, all are welcome to participate in debate and perhaps most importantly, arguments cannot be silenced by individuals attempting to assume special authority. These ideas form the foundation of the peace and prosperity enjoyed by modern society today, under which administrative powers cannot employ violence to instill conformity and orthodoxy amongst their subjects. Of course, free speech includes categorical exemptions. The First Amendment excludes threats, intimidation and harassment, with the latter referring to a persistent pattern of discriminatory behavior. Essentially, certain college students’ actions are not progressive, effective or at all new. In contrast, they are harrowingly reminiscent of regressive, primitive and fundamentalist ideas.

Many college students are trapped within the fragile worlds they have crafted for themselves, worlds which are in a perpetual state of conflict with insensitive professors, ideas and peers. Despite the best attempts of such students to avoid emotional discomfort, rates of anxiety, depression and suicide are surging upwards amongst college-aged students. As students grow increasingly resistant to opposing ideas, they deny themselves the gift of an educated mind, the elation of learning something mind-opening and perspective-altering and ultimately, the very aim of their college education itself. Rather, they regress further and further into their insular, immobilizing and isolating beliefs, existing in a paranoid, dark recess of which they are ruler.