Below is my column on Fox.com on the recent decision of students at Whitworth University to bar a speech from a survivor of Maoist China. It was an ironic but all-too-familiar scene in higher education today.
“to read too many books is harmful.” It appears that many in higher education agree. Not only are writers and intellectuals now supporting blacklisting authors, but universities regularly see speakers banned or cancelled on campuses. Certain views are now viewed as “harmful” and thus intolerable. That latest example is perhaps the most tragically ironic. Associated Students of Whitworth University voted 9-4 to bar Chinese dissident Xi Van Fleet from coming to campus to share her experience as a survivor of Maoist China. Her criticism of “woke” culture in the United States was deemed too harmful for any student to hear.
Students objected to Van Fleet’s tweets on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Black Lives Matter, the LGBTQ community and “environmental justice” among other social justice initiatives.
In its university mission statement, Whitworth declares a deep commitment to free speech on campus: “Whitworth affirms freedom of expression for its students, staff and faculty. Our commitment to free expression is grounded in our faith … We take Jesus Christ as the model for engagement in public discourse and for exploration and expression of ideas.”
Students who came to the university with that assurance are now being told that some views are simply too harmful to be heard.
It may be a familiar moment for Van Fleet from her own experience in the Cultural Revolution. In February 1957, Mao issued a surprising speech titled “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” in which he encouraged intellectual debate and criticism.
Intellectuals were leery and did not come forward, prompting Mao to take measures to induce their speech. When some then criticized party orthodoxy or corruption, Mao had the speech retroactively changed and cracked down on dissenters as spreading harmful thoughts.
Mao rounded up the intellectuals and told citizens that the government would only allow the ‘fragrant flowers’ of healthy debate while pulling out the ‘poisonous weeds’ of noxious capitalism. What is noteworthy is how close the rhetoric of Mao is to that of many anti-free speech advocates today on our campuses.
Mao declared “words and actions should help to unite, not divide, the people of our various nationalities; They should be beneficial, not harmful, to socialist construction; They should help to consolidate, not weaken, the people’s democratic dictatorship; They should help to consolidate, not weaken, democratic centralism.”
The notion that free speech is harmful now permeates our higher education institutions.
Students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with harmful speech and student newspapers have declared opposing views to be outside of the protections of free speech. Even Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll denounced the “weaponization” of free speech.
At Washington & Lee University, faculty signed a petition to bar a conservative speaker and anyone with “harmful ideologies.”
At Emory University, the law review rescinded a publication offer to an author questioning systemic racism theories as “hurtful and unnecessarily divisive.” Other Emory students barred a free speech group from being recognized because there are no apparent safeguards in place to prevent potential and real harm that could result from these discussions[.]”
In the recent outrageous cancelling of a federal judge by Stanford law students, Stanford DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach condemned Judge Duncan for speaking when his views were considered harmful by many. She asked “‘even in this time. And again I still ask: Is the juice worth the squeeze?” Later, while Stanford reaffirmed its commitment to free speech, it refused to punish any of the students that prevented Duncan from speaking.
Portland State University professor Jennifer Ruth defended the cancelling of the judge as an “existential threat” to students and even higher education.
These views fuel the sense of license even for violence. University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. On the University of California (Santa Barbara) campus, professors rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.
The anti-free speech views on our campuses are liberating in allowing faculty and students to silence others. There is no need to respond to opposing views when they are deemed too dangerous to be heard.
In other words, conservative, religious, and libertarian views are now “poisonous weeds” that must be removed from the garden of “fragrant flowers” of approved viewpoints in higher education.
The irony is that the effort to bar Xi Van Fleet is all students need to know about the dangers of this type of cultural revolution and free speech limits. We are raising a generation of speech phobics who believe that they have a right to silence others. They have been told since elementary school that speech is harmful and that they should not be expected to hear views that they find offensive. Those “poisonous” elements are now being pruned from higher education through speech codes, cancel campaigns, and faculties purged of conservative or libertarian professors. What remains is the “fragrant” smell of academic orthodoxy.
It is all enough to make Mao blush.
These Our The Days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TFYl4TjDY0
Our time in Eden
Here is their problem, if they allowed Xi Van Fleet to speak, someone just might draw parallels from Mao’s Culture Revolution to modern leftist wokeism.
In the world of subterfuge and psychological operations, the victims are put off balance, no longer able to make rational decisions because of a lack of accurate information and the inability to recognize truth or untruth or even question the source of information.
If any person, organization or political structure is conducting business truthfully then they would not fear transparency, scrutiny or any form of debate. They would have nothing to hide and they would be able to stand on facts. On the other hand, when a person, organization or political structure or politician does not welcome full investigation, debate or transparency, there is reason for distrust and suspicion.
What does this institution fear about having a communist dissident testify about their person experiences with tyranny? (I speak rhetorically). I spent three days in the DDR in the mid 1970s when I was a teen and a whole day and late into the evening in East Berlin. It was dark, there were still the remains of bombed out neighborhoods. The East German teens risked their lives to talk with us but they were hungry for news and what was happening outside the walls, especially in music, fashion, movies, etc. The contrast between East and West Berlin was stark and shocking. It made an impression on me. I did not see many smiling faces.
I fear for these naive youth, if they are not equipped to think for themselves, many of whom have no idea of the misery that can be inflicted on humans by the despotic tyrants that are never in short supply.
Joe Biden is an example of an ill informed person blinded by the woke crowd. . The left has been oozed up to the top. A perilous time for us all.
“Associated Students of Whitworth University voted 9-4 to bar Chinese dissident Xi Van Fleet from coming to campus . . .” (JT)
Fascists in training — groomed well by their professors.
“But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be (all right)”
No doubt Nien Cheng’s memoire “Life and Death in Shanghai” is on the banned books list. Academics should read it to learn of their fate once the students turned on them. I said years ago–about the time I started my 3rd reading of this excellent book during the Obama administration–that we were headed for the American Cultural Revolution. We have arrived.
None of this is surprising. Today’s academics were taught by Marxist,-Lrninists who loved Mao. They restrict criticism of Communists and communism. I just wrote about it on my blog. They hate freedom and love Mao.
This falls, not on the students, so much as, on the parents and faculty. The issue is only an issue because it’s allowed.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. If the facility held out any and all speakers until the end of each semester where they had a diverse field of unidentified speakers on the syllabus and inform the students their attendance was part of their learning experience for the course. Then inform the students lack of attendance, which must be respectful, accounts for 50% of their grade.
I would anticipate there would be a lot less grumbling if measures such as this were carried out for each course and the faculty would see a return to normal instruction where the faculty was actually in control of the course material and not the students.
Any and all Universities that ban free speech should be ruled ineligible for any federal funding including student loans and faculty research. Public Universities should be completely defunded. Let us see how these bastions of Maoism fare without their infusion of capitalist generated taxpayer subsidies.
Parents are to blame. They pay the tuition. STOP
Have you noticed that many professors now CONDONE acts of violence against conservative speakers and, in most cases, their Universities rally around their faculty members in a pathetic show of solidarity ? I’ve got to hand it to the communists, they’ve pulled off quite a coup in America’s colleges and universities. And the woke left rejoices……
Well one must wonder if this college uses Jesus Christ as their model for engagement in public life one would suppose that his cleansing of the temple of the moneylenders and his stroll though Jerusalem while carrying the cross, his whippings, the placement of the crown of thorns and the actual crucifixion would be banned if there was a witness there to speak about it. Strange choices by know it all students. This is the point where the president of the university is supposed to say this is important history and overrule the students. They’re students in a protected environment, what do they know about struggle against tyranny, “nothing”.
Can someone clue me in on the content of the speech, she was to deliver? I can’t think of any part of her “lived experience” that can harm a college student.
Strange that “lived experience” is not universally worshiped.
In the past she had made the “mistake” of comparing Mao’s Culture Revolution to leftist wokeism.
That cannot be tolerated!
That sounds easy. All the profs have to do is show the superiority of todays agenda.Discredit the speaker with facts. It would only build on the wisdom of their chosen agenda.
If that is the problem
Without debate, its impossible to know
Iowan2,
Exactly!
They cannot permit debate. Their standing and POV fail under scrutiny, critical thinking, objective thinking, and things like truth and facts.
Hence, they cannot permit debate and hide it under the cover of “harm.”
“The notion that free speech is harmful now permeates our higher education institutions.”
The notion that free speech is harmful is also quite popular at Carlson-cancelling Fox “News.”
Read the WSJ’s article about his firing. As the saying goes, he made his own bed.
I’m NOT inclined to believe anything that Murdoch media (WSJ) says about why Murdoch media (Fox) fired its most popular host. I’ll wait to hear Carlson’s explanation. In the meantime, Glenn Greenwald — a frequent guest on Carlson’s show — has opined on the subject:
https://rumble.com/v2k86j4-system-update-show-77.html
Apparently my reply got censored. There’s a LOT of that going around these days with anyone connected to Murdoch media.
Wow. Some people must have read Mao’s Little Red Book and took it to heart. Just hope that we can put that genie back in the bottle
‘We are raising a generation of speech phobics who believe that they have a right to silence others. They have been told since elementary school that speech is harmful and that they should not be expected to hear views that they find offensive.’
There is a difference between this and Mao’s treachery: we largely, initially, set the ball in motion ourselves. Seriously. This started with helicoptering and the sheltering of snowflake ‘feelings’ from ordinary life events. The natural evolution of that wiring to freedom from any challenge or discomfort is what we are seeing today. I don’t see this getting any better any time soon until we acknowledge that seemingly innocent coddling with good intentions can light a fire that is very difficult to put out.
Kids are showing up to college already ignorant and susceptible; the ability to think critically is already absent, it’s only recently that indoctrination has begun to trickle down to lower grades in earnest, and that not coincidentally as that first generation entered the workforce. Social media and mobile technology have certainly not helped. Even prior to being hyper-politicized, American schools have been circling the drain for some time.
What seemed laughable and absurd in 2010 has rapidly become very much legitimately concerning. The quality of people in question of a situation generally sets the table regardless of circumstance. Useful idiots, indeed.
We are being destroyed from within. Thanks to our education sysyem.
As cancer does.
that is surprising, given that Rainbowshirt(think brown shirt, mao suit) Fascist Democrats are using the Cultural Revolution as their model in their Civil War against America. There second!
Fascinating
this is why we NEED TO CUT OFF THE MONEY
-Tax all non-profits anyone gets $100k: colleges, hospitals, etc
-Ban fed aid/loans cities & college, make them fund themselves
@guyventner too late for that. Never happen we are more likely to go to gun.
Elections are rigged. Without the ballot box the remedy is the cartridge box.
Scalpels to remedy the “burden” at ten paces. A vacuum to sequester the carbon pollutants.