Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis is no right-winger. A self-described feminist who has written extensively for such publications as Harper’s, Slate, Vox, and the New York Times Book Review, her leftist bona fides would not seem to be in question. At least, that was until two years ago, when she wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education an article titled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe.”
As if to prove her thesis that sexual politics on campus have become toxic, a gaggle of students marched on the university president’s office to demand “a swift, official condemnation” of her essay. When that didn’t happen, things turned ugly and thuggish: Her detractors filed Title IX complaints, dragging her into one of the kangaroo courts designed by the campus Kafkas. She detailed the ordeal for the Chronicle, in what may be the essential essay on the wacky, brutal intolerance of the modern university: “My Title IX Inquisition.” Must reading.
The notoriety born of the controversy follows her, as when she spoke recently at Wellesley College on the abuses of Title IX. Refreshingly, there was neither violence nor serious attempts to silence her. “What actually happened was that there was a lively back and forth after I spoke. The students were smart and articulate, including those who disagreed with me,” Kipnis told the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Could things on campus be looking up?
Don’t bet on it. Students aren’t the only would-be commissars: In the wake of Kipnis’s talk, six professors on Wellesley’s Commission for Ethnicity, Race, and Equity penned an aggrieved letter complaining about speakers with “objectionable beliefs,” who “impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley.” Free speech is just code, you see, for “the bullying of disempowered groups.”
Which suggests that snowflakes aren’t so much born as made. “When dozens of students tell us they are in distress as a result of a speaker’s words, we must take these complaints at face value,” said the Commission for Ethnicity, Race, and Equity. It’s a type of distress that can be avoided, you see, if the commissioners are simply given a veto: “We in CERE are happy to serve as a sounding board when hosts are considering inviting controversial speakers, to help sponsors think through the various implications of extending an invitation.” The Scrapbook has no doubt they would be very happy indeed.
To her credit, Kipnis is having none of it. “As someone who’s been teaching for a long time, and wants to see my students able to function in the world post-graduation,” she told FIRE, “protecting students from the ‘distress’ of someone’s ideas isn’t education, it’s a $67,000 babysitting bill.”
