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Group Releases Report Saying There’s No Free Speech Crisis on College Campuses

Group Releases Report Saying There’s No Free Speech Crisis on College Campuses

Really?

The report was put out by a writers’ advocacy group called PEN America. I’m guessing the writers of the report haven’t spent much time on college campuses lately.

The College Fix reports:

New report says there’s no free speech ‘crisis’ on campus, gets Yale Halloween ‘really wrong’

PEN America, part of the writers’ advocacy group PEN International, released a weighty report this week on “diversity, inclusion and freedom of speech” on campus.

Though it’s been generally lauded by free-speech fans for documenting a litany of attacks on free speech – and insisting that it “must be vigilantly guarded if its continued strength is to be assured” – the report has some curious conclusions:

PEN America’s view, as of October 2016, is that while the current controversies merit attention and there have been some troubling incidences of speech curtailed, there is not, as some accounts have suggested, a pervasive “crisis” for free speech on campus. …

At times protests and forms of expression are treated as if they are incursions on free speech when in fact they are manifestations of free speech. Some entreaties for or against the use of particular language (even if the terms sound neologistic, overly politically correct, or otherwise distasteful to some ears) should be recognized as adaptations to students whose ethnic and racial backgrounds, upbringing, and priorities may bear scant resemblance to the populations that dominated the university campus during the second half of the 20th century. While liberal values and principles remain fundamental, the implications of these precepts necessarily evolve from generation to generation, reflecting social changes and new norms.

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Comments

Pen America is populated with fools. The attack on free speech in colleges and universities is real. When you can shout down a speaker and have the university do nothing, you destroy free speech.

Hard to believe that’s a “writer’s group”; the second paragraph in the excerpt above reads like what you’d get if John Milton tried to translate a Swedish refrigerator repair manual.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” – John Heywood (1546)

The authors just outed themselves as Winston Smiths. Remember their names – they are not to be trusted on any future topic.