New Harvard Alumni Group Fights ‘for Free Speech on Campus’
“If a college does not have free speech,” Kurzon said, “what is it for?”
It’s amazing that it falls to alumni to take on this issue. What about the people who run the school?
The College Fix reports:
Harvard alumni form group to fight for free speech on campus
Harvard University is the best college in the world, or so George Kurzon thought.
But Kurzon, who graduated from the Ivy League university in 1951, recently discovered his alma mater ranked in the bottom 20 percent on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 2021 free speech rankings — then dropped even lower in 2022 to the bottom 17 percent.
“A university is of little value if it does not defend and promote freedom of speech, thought and expression,” he told The College Fix in a telephone interview.
Kurzon decided to do something about it. Along with fellow Harvard alumnus John O’Donnell, who graduated from its business school in 1977, the two help lead the new Harvard Alumni for Free Speech group.
“If a college does not have free speech,” Kurzon said, “what is it for?”
Harvard has been in the news recently for incidents relating to limitations of free speech.
In April 2022, Harvard University canceled a talk by philosopher Devin Buckley on the topic of British Romanticism due to her views on transgenderism.
Harvard scholar Carole Hooven was also the target of a cancel culture campaign in 2021 for her views on “biological reality.”
And the youngest black professor ever tenured at Harvard, Roland Fryer — an economist whose research upended the progressive narrative on topics such as bias, racism and policing — was canceled at the university in what’s been called an “ideological purge.”
The university last year also required an online training for all undergrads that taught that calling someone by “the wrong pronoun” is “abusive behavior.”
HAFFS argues that protecting free speech is important for academic discovery, even if some people find certain content disagreeable.
“Most issues can be fixed if all viewpoints can be shared,” because if the “principles of free speech are protected, truth will win out,” O’Donnell told The College Fix in a telephone interview.
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Comments
Why is a Harvard alumnus ending a sentence with a preposition?
Being serious (Who? Me?) he is absolutely right.
I know you were kidding – yes, really! – but thou hast triggered me all the same. Prepositions are words I’m happy to end sentences with. (And how about logically including “interior” clauses as well?) We write in a flexible Germanic language, not Latin. As someone – undoubtedly NOT Winston Churchill – once wrote, “This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.” Unsurprisingly, it isn’t being applied to speech.
The silliness that Poole and Dryden tried to impose seems to have been largely ignored for centuries, but the pressure to conform to it has snowballed in the past half century. Now it takes bravery to buck it. The myth is ingrained, writing is stilted, and the scolds are ubiquitous.
Guy’s in his 90s? Dude!
And still wanting to fight. Good for him!
It’s about time!
I wish them all the best.
Godspeed.
They will need divine help.