Switching Places on Free Speech

Further to my observations about the status of free speech in higher education today, this week’s Economist offers the following questions arising from the Middlebury disgrace:

Mr. Murray is left to worry about academic freedom and to note that many of his assailants resembled figures from “a film of brownshirt rallies.” Middlebury’s agitators might ask themselves how a man whose work they regard as racist acquired the right to compare them to fascists. Students everywhere should wonder how free speech, a central liberal value, is instead becoming the banner of conservatives.

I doubt there is going to be much questioning or wondering by the student thugs, because they are not liberals. They are indeed fascists. We should start calling them so. And they grow stronger because of the appeasers in college administration.

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