"What you see ain't what I see."
-The character Captain to the character Eddie in The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
As I was reading InstaPundit this morning, I happened upon this link to Erin O'Connor's weblog, Critical Mass. O'Connor's post, "Irony of the Day," discussed a recent speech by historian Arthur Schlesinger which was delivered to students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
Schlesinger's talk, titled "Patriotism and Dissent in Wartime," focused on his belief that the Bush administration is opposed to political dissent. He was particularly critical of John Ashcroft's address before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2001, labeling Ashcroft's remarks as a move to discourage free speech.
O'Connor feels this is ironic because there is no free speech at Swarthmore. "...if John Ashcroft were a Swarthmore student, he could conceivably file charges against Swarthmore for allowing Schlesinger to speak so critically and derisively of him."
I've been of the impression that one of the purposes of higher education is to encourage students to air and discuss all sides of any issue, no matter how sensitive or unpopular it might be. I suppose I've been wrong.
This USA Today article goes into some detail about how, on many campuses today, dissent is discouraged and sometimes punished. Evidently, it is a fairly widespread phenomenon, for at least one organization has been formed to put freedom of speech back into the college classroom. They've had some success. Perhaps all this is necessary, but whatever happened to the First Amendment?
1 comment:
The USA Today article didn't give enough information about individual cases to allow the reader to make an informed judgment. I can belief that bureacratic-minded university administrators may sometimes go overboard on restricting campus religious groups. But on the whole, I don't find the complaint that conservative white Christians are being persecuted as such on campuses convincing. - Bruce
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