A World Turned Upside Down

When I was discharged from the Army back in the late 60s to attend college, I showed up on my university in the midst of the Free Speech Movement – which I joined.

WC was a protesting hippie?! No. A YIPPIE – ala: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Look it up.

Anyway, the Free Speech Movement started in Berkeley was in full swing.

Often said to be the start of student protest movements during the 1960s and 1970s, the Free Speech Movement (FSM) brought together University of California, Berkeley, students, teaching assistants, and faculty members to protest against the university's ban on political activities, and to establish the right to express their political views on campus.

Let’s repeat that last line.

…….to establish the right to express their political views on campus.

Today we have college students protesting just the opposite.

A group of Yale students interrupted and later protested a panel extolling the virtues of free speech.

Earlier in his remarks, Lukianoff mocked those who were hysterical about Associate Master Erika Christakis‘ email about Halloween costumes.  “Looking at the reaction to Erika Christakis’s email, you would have thought someone wiped out an entire Indian village,” he joked.

Someone posted Lukianoff’s joke about how Yale students were comically overreacting to speech they disagreed with on Facebook. Yale students responded by, well, comically overreacting to speech they disagreed with.

A large group of students eventually gathered outside of the building on High Street. According to Buckley fellows present during the conference, several attendees were spat on as they left. One Buckley fellow said he was spat on and called a racist. Another, who identifies as a minority himself, said he has been labeled a “traitor” by several.

But Yale’s not the first to attack free speech.

First, a student legislative council at the University of California-Irvine approved (6-4) a resolution to ban the American flag from student government offices. The banners felt those should be “inclusive” spaces, while the American flag has been “flown in instances of colonialism and imperialism.” And besides – get this – “freedom of speech, in a space that aims to be as inclusive as possible, can be interpreted as hate speech.”

Also recently, the student government at The George Washington University approved a measure requiring student leaders to attend LGBT sensitivity training regarding, inter alia, “using proper gender pronouns.” A conservative student group, the Young America’s Foundation chapter at GW, declined to go along.  You can imagine how well that went over. The campus LGBT group, Allied in Pride, responded that YAF’s “refusal to use preferred gender pronouns should be considered an act of violence.” The comment calls to mind the Social Justice Kittens calendar, which features adorable kittens saying things such as “this conversation doesn’t make me feel safe” and “you are jeopardizing my well-being with your violent refusal to agree.”

Free speech movement 50 years ago – anti-free speech now.

A world turned upside down.